For reality TV fans, there’s one surefire way to mark when summer has officially begun: A new season of “Love Island USA.”
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The villa officially opened on Tuesday night for the season 8 premiere, welcoming a new cast of scantily clad Islanders for six weeks of sunbathing, raunchy games and communal dating — all in hopes they will be voted America’s favorite couple and win $100,000.
Coloradans have a hometown hero to root for this season, as one woman in the original group of Islanders boasts local roots.
Beatriz Hatz is a 25-year-old medal-winning Paralympian currently living in San Diego. But before she was a West Coast resident, Hatz grew up in Lakewood, Colo. where she made a name for herself in track and field competitions.
A graduate of D’Evelyn High School’s class of 2019, Hatz revealed on the “Love Island” premiere that she was always into sports and grew up competing with her two brothers. On Team USA, she has competed in long jump and sprinting events, including at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics and the 2024 Paris Paralympics. In the 2024 competition, she earned a bronze medal in the long jump.
Hatz arrived at the “Love Island” villa in Fiji on Tuesday night in a stunning red bikini top and skirt with her long curly hair draped over her shoulders and spoke about her disability. A proud Mexican-American, Hatz was born with a rare birth defect called fibular hemimelia, which means the fibula bone in her right leg never developed. Hatz’s leg below the knee was amputated when she was 10 months old.
“They thought maybe I would never walk and now I run for a living,” she said during introductions with show host Ariana Maddix and the other female Islanders.
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According to Hatz’s bio on the Team USA website, her hobbies include drawing, painting and snowboarding. But we also learned a few more personal details during the “Love Island” premiere.
In the first compatibility game of the season, Islanders were broken into gendered groups and separated by colorful doors. They were asked a series of questions and then answered them by standing behind the doors marked with their preferred answers. Once the doors opened, they got to see who from the opposite sex had the same answer and then play a round of tonsil hockey with each person.
We’ll save a few of the juicer details for you to discover yourself, but Hatz had undeniable face-sucking chemistry with a guy named Sean, who is a police officer from Pennsylvania, and the two coupled up on the first night in the villa. (Officer Sexy Pants, as he’s known, caught some shade from the mayor of the town where he used to work after resigning to join the cast.)
During their conversations, we also learned Hatz hates country music — “I would much rather acquire another disability and become deaf than listen to country music,” she said — and sees having a kid as a red flag, which doesn’t bode well for her relationship with Sean, who is also a father. By the end of the episode, Hatz was swapping spit with a brand new bombshell.
What happens next? You’ll have to keep up with the drama every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday when “Love Island USA” airs new episodes on Peacock.
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