Stephanie Dixon stands before a group of Glacier Bears at the Canada Games Centre pool.

She hands out medals to pass around so the young swimmers can feel the weight and see the design.

These are medals from the Paralympic Games.

Dixon has a lot of them, 19 medals – seven gold, 10 silver and two bronze – over three appearances at the Paralympic Games, starting in Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008.

The 27-year-old was arguably one of the best swimmers in the world, with at least four world records to her credit.

And she was born with one leg.

"I always focused on the process – not the result – and the result always followed,” said the Victoria, B.C., native.

"If you just think about the times you want to go or the medals you want to win, then you're going to miss half of the steps to getting there; but if you do one step at a time, before you know it, you're going to be at those times, you're going to get those medals.”

For Dixon, those steps included competing against able-bodied athletes, against whom her best placing was 15th at the Canadian University Championships.

"Coming 15th at the CIS Championships meant just as much to me as coming first in the Paralympic Games because they were my best times, they were my best efforts. That's what I'm trying to get across to these guys – everyone has different strengths and different weaknesses, and you can't be comparing yourself to other people, you have to be just focusing on improving yourself.”

Dixon first visited the Yukon in 2005 to hold a camp with the Glacier Bears.

Her mother moved to Whitehorse in October, so while she was up for a visit, Glacier Bears coach Jim Thompson invited her to hold another series of camps.

Glacier Bear Kirsten Berube attended both camps.

"Even just experiencing another coach coming up, because every coach teaches a little bit differently, especially with all the experience she has, just the little techniques she can offer is good for us,” said the 16-year-old.

"The Yukon's a pretty small place, so we're lucky when anyone comes up like that. It's really great that she came up here and worked with us, even if it's just for a week or so, to help us with our technique.

"It's inspiring when anyone comes up and can say what they've done and help us. To be around them is pretty cool.”

Dixon said her goal during the visit was to provide inspiration with her story, but also share technical tips she's learned from some of the world's best coaches.

"In the last year, I have worked with three of the top coaches in the world and I got lots of technical tips and so I'm passing it on to these young swimmers, as well as sharing my stories and medals with them, trying to give them a bit of inspiration and what hard work, dedication can lead to,” Dixon said of Victoria-based coaches Ron Jacks and Randy Bennett, and Australian coach Denis Cotterell.

Dixon is especially keen to impart her wisdom after recently retiring from swimming and now looking to jump into coaching.

"I know that every swimmer is individual and that you have to figure out what works for each individual swimmer, and so I'm taking my experiences with the coaches that I worked with – and I'm taking the things that I really liked from them – and trying to improve upon the things that I didn't think worked when I was a swimmer,” Dixon said.

"This was a perfect introduction to get into coaching, and I really loved working with the team. All the kids are really coachable, they're all here and they all really want to improve, and so it's really easy to work with kids that are excited and hard working.”