Newport Beach teen pieces together swimwear line during long recovery from cheer injury
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In the blink of an eye, life can change without warning, and perhaps nobody knows the truth of that better than Newport Beach 17-year-old Amanda Walcott.
Walcott was a happy-go-lucky varsity cheerleader at Newport Harbor High School, practicing her roundoff handspring tucks in November 2023, when something went horribly awry.
She fell down hard on her hand and so she went to see the team trainer to address the pain. It wasn’t until days later that she started to feel more serious symptoms.
It would take several weeks and numerous doctors appointments and consultations for her to pinpoint the cause of her primary symptoms — sleeping up to 22 hours a day, severe headaches and stomach pains that made it nearly impossible to eat or drink.
A petite girl, just barely over 5-feet tall, her slight frame was hit hard as the mysterious symptoms took a toll.
One day, while viewing a video someone had taken on that fateful day’s practice, Walcott noticed she’d landed on her neck during the tumble.
“I’d actually landed on my neck and my head really bad,” she recalled Wednesday. “I had no clue that I’d even hit my head until I saw the video.”
Finally, a doctor gave the opinion that she could be suffering from functional abdominal pain syndrome brought on by physical trauma strong enough to disrupt the body’s brain-gut axis and, possibly, the vagus nerve, which controls the body’s nervous system.
It would be the beginning of a long medical journey that continues to this day. Walcott was forced to miss four months of school and eventually had to withdraw from Newport Harbor High, signing up for a private academy that would work with her schedule and allow her to take classes both in person and remotely, as needed.
But something else happened during the teen’s long road to recovery, something just as unexpected and life-changing, only this time for the better.
Living in Newport, going to the beach and soaking in the sun’s rays was a powerfully healing experience for Walcott who, throughout her protracted recuperation, keeps a heating pad on hand for warmth.
“The beach kind of became the first place I could actually enjoy being with people and hanging out,” Walcott recalled. “The sun is a natural heating pad, there’s fresh air — it was really peaceful.”
Even while laid out on various hospital beds, the high schooler shopped online for bikinis, scrolling through pages and pages of styles, brands and variations that she knew were all wrong for her diminutive body.
The suits had straps that were too long and not adjustable, or painful plastic clips that dug into wearers’ backs or shoulders, bottoms that tended to sag and pull downward during swimming. Other styles resulted in unusual or unsightly tan lines.
“There are a lot of things you don’t think about until you’ve bought the product,” she said. “I was researching bikinis to buy, and I’d find a couple of people with their own companies and think, how cool, that’s like my dream.”
Bored and with a load of time on her hands, Walcott began looking into what it would take to design and manufacture her own bikinis. In the hands of a business-minded kid who was always dreaming up ways to turn a hobby into a company, the homegrown venture began to take off.
After developing the name Beachside Bikinis and purchasing a domain name, Walcott found a sustainable, eco-friendly manufacturer capable of creating designs using recycled fabric. Over months of communications, design notes, spec sheets and the shipping and analysis of fabric samples, the teen created the framework for a swimwear line.
Father and business backer Glenn Walcott, a trained accountant who’s applied his own entrepreneurial talents to helping grow numerous businesses, said he’s been more than impressed watching his daughter learn the ins and outs of the fashion industry.
“She just has this drive and focus and attention to detail that’s inspiring,” he said. “This is her dream, and she’s creating everything for it.”
Intended for teens and young adults, Beachside Bikinis’ product line consists of six matching bikini sets made from two different styles featured in three different cuts, a 100% silk sarong and a bikini bag customers can take to the beach.
The Walcotts hosted an April 4 launch party at the family’s Newport Beach home with a small group of friends and associates who were invited to try on the different styles. It was a huge success.
“Her health journey continues, and it’s been a real giant struggle,” the proud father said of his daughter’s experience. “But the thing that works the best for her is this business — it gets her mind to focus on something besides the pain.”
Nearly one and a half years since her injury, Amanda Walcott admits she’s not fully healed. Still, she’s hopeful she can return to Newport Harbor High for her senior year.
She wants to continue to develop Beachside Bikinis online, learning more about e-commerce, marketing and search engine optimization, while maybe getting some suits onto the racks of a couple of local retail boutiques. After graduation, she plans to continue learning the business side of her enterprise in college.
“I just want to keep improving every day and, hopefully, hit it from all angles. It’s like my baby at this point,” she said.
Reflecting on the past year, the 17-year-old says she’s grateful to have found an endeavor that helped her rise out of her physical suffering and set her on a brighter path.
“I’ve definitely grown as a person, and everything has kind of brought me here. Yeah, it’s horrible all this has happened, and it sucks I’m still going through stuff. But I feel like I’ve learned so much,” she said. “It gave me hope, I guess, that there’s a future.”
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