Written by Ezra Cohen
Katherine Phillips still vividly remembers the wee hours of October 7th, 2023.
“I happened to wake up in the middle of the night,” Phillips explains. “And I happened to look at my phone, and I saw what happened.”
She remembers thinking, “This is really bad.”
Phillips, a Navy Contractor working at a federally qualified health center felt alone and helpless. Her husband, a physical therapist in the U.S. Army, was deployed in Honduras at the time. “I don’t even think he fully realized what was going on,” she says.
But Phillips herself understood its magnitude and she badly wanted an outlet for her grief and anger. In the days after the attack, she considered her options. She recalled her childhood dream of competing in the triathlon at the Maccabiah, and felt convinced that visiting Israel and competing would be more meaningful to her than ever. With the tragedies of October 7th fueling her, she set her sights on competing at the 2025 Maccabiah in Israel.
Born to a maternally-Jewish family in Pismo Beach, California, Phillips’ first passion was gymnastics. She has fond memories of running laps with the older gymnasts in the park; this sparked her love of running. Soon after, she learned to ride a bike. On a whim, she enrolled in a kids triathlon and won.
“That made me hooked,” she says. Before long, she was training hard and improving. “I moved on to the IronKids Triathlon series and then made the Junior National Team. A funny story was that I was so tiny when I made my first Junior National team at 14 that no bike properly fit me!” she explains.
When she learned about the Maccabiah, she made it her goal to compete in Israel. In 1997, a 17-year-old Phillips was thrilled to be chosen to represent Maccabi USA in the triathlon. However, because of some scheduling conflicts, Phillips was unable to compete that year. Four years later, when the Maccabiah rolled around again, the triathlon was cancelled. Phillips was devastated.
“I always wanted to go to Israel, see Israel. I always want to meet my family. Sports are such a big part of my life, like it was a perfect mix of everything. So just in my head, even from a very young age, it was three things: World Championships, Olympics and the Maccabi Games,” she explains.
Phillips built her career around caring for others. In the early 2000s, she found herself coaching a visually impaired cyclist for the U.S. Paralympic Team. But in 2011, the athlete was involved in a crash at the World Championships that left him with a traumatic brain injury. After coordinating care and rehabilitation for the athlete, Phillips knew she had found her passion–caring for people with traumatic brain injuries. Where, exactly, to work was still a question.
In 2014, she found her answer when she accompanied her husband to a Navy hospital where he was an intern; the experience was powerful for her. In 2012, when she graduated from chiropractic school, she began caring for service members with TBIs. Soon, Phillips began working as a civilian contractor for the Navy treating Special Immigration Visa holders. In the time since, she has seen over 4,000 patients and she now chairs the American Board of Chiropractic Specialties under the American Chiropractic Association. Since October 7th, she shifted to working at a federally qualified health center in rural San Diego County, where, as she describes, she ensures “nobody falls through the cracks and that everybody’s able to access basic healthcare.”
Even before October 7th, being a Jew in the military was difficult and isolating for Phillips.
“There just isn’t a strong community,” she explains. But Phillips describes one chain of events that inspired her to be more open about her Judaism in the military. One afternoon, while lap swimming at San Ysidro Health, where she currently works, Phillips struck up a conversation with a military chaplain. At one point Phillips turned the conversation towards Judaism and the lack of Jewish presence in the military. Before long, the chaplain referred her to one of the few military Rabbis. She reached out and ended up celebrating the upcoming holiday of Passover on one of the military ships in the Port of SanDiego. At the Seder, Phillips was able to completely relax.
“If you think about Passover last year, it was a rough time, so it was so nice too, because you were just in a place where you can completely enjoy the entire experience and you don’t have to worry about anything,” she says.
More than just fulfilling a personal dream in the aftermath of October 7th, Phillips sees her decision to compete in the 2025 Maccabiah to be about upending traditional roles in military families. “I want to set an example for military spouses, because so often our goals get put aside to support our service members, and we can still have big dreams and set big goals, and it’s possible to achieve them and make them happen,” she explains.
Phillips has fallen into this supportive role quite happily. For example, when her husband returned from deployment just months after October 7th, she asked the internet-famous Maccabeats if they would create a welcome-home video for her husband–and they did. But in committing to the 2025 Games, Phillips put herself, and her goals, first. “There [are] Jewish service members out there, and there [are] Jewish military spouses out there, and being able to be a role model is really important to me,” she says.
Of course, inspirational-intentions aside, Phillips is also thrilled for the opportunity to compete simply for competition’s sake. “I really want to contribute to the [Maccabi USA] medal count,” she says. She hopes to medal in the triathlon, and specifically to place well in the half marathon and swimming portions of the race. She is excited to meet her cousins and have them cheer her on. She is thrilled to “get to the airport and kiss the ground.”
Ultimately she understands that there’s always an element of chance. You chase your dreams, and you show up to the race. “You’ll have the race you’re meant to have on race day,” she explains.
Ezra Cohen is an aspiring sports and nature journalist from Portland, OR. In high school, he founded a thriving non-profit dedicated to preserving a large, urban wildlife refuge in Portland. He is a sophomore at Macalester College, where he writes for the Mac Weekly. Follow Ezra’s work and experiences on LinkedIn and Instagram.