Chad writes about his journey from growing up in small-town Saskatchewan and playing hockey to his life-altering car accident and finding Wheelchair Basketball in this month’s Athlete Spotlight presented by Toyota.

I grew up in Saskatchewan, in a small town of about 500 people. I worked on my grandfather’s farm. I had multiple jobs when I was younger such as working as a lifeguard, but the farm was pretty fun.

Growing up in small-town Saskatchewan was a unique experience because I got the chance to play every single sport pretty much. I played everything other than football and soccer. I played badminton and volleyball. I was a curler—growing up in that small of a town if you don’t play; basically, you’re not going to have a team, so you become a pretty well-rounded athlete, and I think it’s a huge advantage.

Hockey was my main sport. I played it right up to where I got hurt and broke my back. I definitely miss it. I find there are a lot of similarities to Wheelchair Basketball – how you play defensively is the same way you play hockey—being able to take the body out and be able to just play positioning.

The year I got hurt, I was actually playing Junior B, and early on in the season, I separated my shoulder; that’s why I’ve got a weird collarbone. So, I had to find something else to do during the winter as I healed, and I became a snowboard instructor while I was finishing off my aviation schooling.

I was taking aviation at Medicine Hat College. My day consisted of getting up, going to college, and flying airplanes every day—it was a pretty unique experience and super fun. I had my commercial license, and the goal was to eventually become an airline pilot. I was still unsure what route that would’ve taken me.

The accident

In 2004, I was a passenger in a car accident. I was on the way to the ski hill, where I was a snowboard instructor. I was in the right passenger, rear seat, and just had a lap belt. Farm machinery cut in front of us on the highway and didn’t see us coming, I guess.

We tried to avoid it. We hit a round bale spreader with a giant one-ton or two-ton round bales on it with a little four-door car. Tipped the machinery right over and broke the hitch right off the tractor, and the car burst into flames. I can remember everything like it was yesterday, and I’m so glad I can because it’s a life-altering experience.

From that second on, my life was never the same. I’m glad I got to live a unique experience most people never would. It gave me a new outlook on life that you just can’t take anything for granted because you just never know about tomorrow. The one thing you can’t get back is time.

The injury

I broke my back at T-12 and had damage up to about T-10-ish. I also broke six ribs on one side, three on the other, had a hematoma, and had some pretty severe internal bleeding that I had to get surgery for, so it was quite a long recovery.

From the day of the accident for about a month, I couldn’t really do anything, and from then on, it was just in my hands of how much I wanted to progress and how hard I wanted to work. I had a ton of pain still from the surgeries. But I noticed the harder I worked, the better I felt versus just lying in bed or sitting in a chair. I was pretty sedentary initially, but that really inspired me to go and work harder because I felt better doing it.

Finding Wheelchair Basketball

I remember being in the hospital about a week later, and Wheelchair Basketball was the only sport I had ever really heard of other than sledge hockey. I just proclaimed to my friends; they were asking, ‘Oh, what are you going to do?’ Everyone was worried because obviously, I wasn’t going to be a pilot anymore; what are you going to do with your life? I just declared to them, ‘I’m going to join the Paralympics and win a gold medal in Wheelchair Basketball.’

It ended up coming true. There’s obviously a lot of luck involved in that, but it was a unique experience and super cool early on that I set my sights on something and it just so happened that it worked out. But it took a lot of hard work to get there.

Wheelchair Basketball was the light at the end of the tunnel when I was sitting in this hospital room and had absolutely nothing to do. A lot times I would just slip down to the gym and I was sort of bribing the guy who worked at the gym—I would just beg him to let me shootaround in my day chair on the basketball hoop.

For safety concerns, they didn’t want me in there unsupervised, but he started turning a blind eye to things when he realized I was a good guy and that I was just going stir-crazy. I owe a lot to him for giving me that little extra leeway, privilege, and trust that I’m not going to hurt myself. It just really gave me a lot more inspiration as well. I was in the hospital with nothing to look forward to.

While I was in rehab, I was introduced to a couple of other sports, but Wheelchair Basketball really resonated with me because it was the one sport that all my friends could come and jump in and play with me. Because early on its not like I had a giant group of wheelchair friends that I could say, ‘hey come play this.’ Sure, I was going to meet some along the way, but it’s nice to be able to have my brother and my best friends come out and jump in a chair.

We still love to beat each other. It doesn’t matter that I’m in a wheelchair; they still want to smash the ball down my face—that’s why we’re friends, so that’s a giant connector. That’s why mountain biking and skiing are also high up on my list because I jump in a sit-ski, and I keep up with all my friends like the accident never happened. We can still connect. It’s a different way of doing something together.

Wheelchair Basketball is that great connector that anybody can play it.

London 2012

My first Paralympics was incredible. It was a turning point for my life. I’d been working since 2006 in Wheelchair Basketball almost exclusively. My training hours ramped up over the years, but by the time I hit 2012, I’d been playing professionally in Europe for a couple of years; it’s been a full-time job for me and taken me all over the world.

It was a ton of work, but it was nice to see that come to fruition and get something from it. It was nice to join a really good team with some legends on there that carried us to victory as well, but a pretty cool experience.

My favourite memory was looking up in the stands and seeing my parents in a sold-out arena of 15,000 people and being able to point at my parents up in the stands and seeing how happy my dad was. In a lot of ways, my accident was scarier for them than for me. I knew I would be alright; I knew that I’d be fine that there are things I like and I’ll be successful if I work hard enough, but I’m sure they had some concerns and felt bad for me, but they never felt bad again after that day because they realized my life was going to be great.

Advice for future players

I would give this advice to anybody—whether you’re disabled, not disabled, if you have a buddy who is disabled, literally anybody: go and try it out cause anybody can play the sport, and it’s super fun. I was terrible at basketball. I was a really good athlete, but basketball was definitely not my thing, but the way the chairs are so nimble and how fast they turn and the speed you get in the chair, how much contact there is—there’s just so many different skills and fun parts about the game that it’s definitely worth trying.