Before enlisting in the Army, Rick Yarosh of Windsor, N.Y., had taken up golf and was getting good at it. He planned to continue his pursuit of the sport when he returned from deployment.
But in 2006, while Yarosh served as a sergeant in Iraq, an I.E.D. exploded, burning 60 percent of his body and causing him to lose his nose, ears, a leg and several fingers. Since then, Yarosh has been continuing his physical therapy while also working at Sitrin Health Care Center, helping with its military rehabilitation program.
Yarosh was eager to try golf again, but he couldn’t find an adaptive club that worked with his disabilities. Luckily, two students from SUNY-Polytechnic Institute (near Utica, N.Y.) stepped in to help.
Nicholas Arbour and Adam Peters had a class assignment to solve a real-world problem and started meeting with Yarosh in January to design a golf club that would accommodate his needs. Arbour and Peters studied professional golfers’ swings and created three prototypes on a 3-D printer to develop their final design, which includes a wrist guard and a handle that Yarosh can hold while he swings the club.
On October 28, Arbour and Peters presented Yarosh with his new golf club at a ceremony at Sitrin Health Care Center. “I’m so happy,” Yarosh tells Syracuse.com. “I tried the club and I could hit the ball with it quite a distance. Now I can go out with my friends again and play golf. It’s an incredible feeling…I used to wrestle and play football, and I like to be competitive. It was another piece of my life that I lost, and these two helped me get that back.”
Arbour and Peters earned top grades from their professor for their project. “I would have written to their professor and protested if they didn’t get an A,” Yarosh says. “They worked really hard at this, and it means a lot to me.”
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Tag: Adaptive Sports
Despite Their Disabilities, These Veterans Commemorated 9/11 in a Courageous Way
When 24-year-old Cody Elliott was a teenager in Pismo Beach, Calif., he worked at a surf shop where he helped disabled people learn how to ride the waves. “Seeing them smile on the waves while they were surfing — that showed me that no matter what, life continues on afterwards,” Elliott tells Carmen George of the Fresno Bee.
Inspired by his best friend’s loss of a family member in the 9/11 attacks, Elliott enlisted in the Marines. The lesson of life continuing on became crucial for Elliott when he lost his left leg above the knee while serving in Afghanistan in 2011.
Despite the injury, Elliott is thankful for what he still has. He climbs mountains with the names of six of his comrades who died in Afghanistan tattooed on his right arm next to a picture of the World Trade Center. And last week, Elliott joined a group of injured veterans scaling three peaks — El Capitan, Royal Arches and Ranger Rock — in Yosemite National Park to commemorate September 11th.
“Getting out climbing is my peace of mind these days,” Elliott tells George. “The only thing you hear is your breath and the people motivating you at the bottom. It’s just you and the rock.”
Elliott enjoys climbing so much, he hopes to make a career in the climbing industry. “My whole thing is to motivate people through life,” he says. “That no matter what, you can get up and be physically active.”
The climbing expedition was arranged by Army veteran D.J. Skelton, who started Paradox Sports — a Boulder, Colorado-based nonprofit that organizes adaptive sports expeditions for disabled people after he was injured in Iraq. “I lost my left eye, my upper jaw and palate, a lot extensive facial damage,” he tells Sara Sandrik of KFSN. “So we decided to have this on September 11th as celebration, a celebration of the life that we have, the life, the limbs, the things that we have sacrificed that have brought us together as a community,” says Skelton.
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For Veterans Suffering from PTSD, Relief is Found Deep Under Water
For U.S. soldiers, returning home from deployment can be a lonely event. That’s especially true for those suffering from PTSD; these veterans often isolate themselves from others, seeking the quiet and calm that they haven’t experienced since before their service.
Marine veteran Timothy Maynard of Greenville, N.C., has found a way to achieve that peace without isolation and now he’s sharing his secret with others.
After serving his country for eight years, Maynard struggled. “It was pretty bad,” he tells Josh Birch of WNCT. “I did a little bit of time with the rehabilitation clinic trying to get back to where I could kind of function with normal people and on my own.”
Then Maynard tried scuba diving through Scuba Now, and enjoyed it so much, he became an instructor. “Underwater it’s just kind of quiet, it’s slow, I don’t have to worry about distractions from other people, other noise,” Maynard tells Birch. “It’s just me and my breath. I’m just doing my own thing. So it lets me slow my mind down so that I can relax and I don’t have to stress.”
Maynard began to invite other vets to try scuba diving as therapy, and he must be a pretty convincing pitchman because over the past year, the Scuba Now shops in Greenville and Wilmington, N.C. have trained 400 veterans, bringing the total number of service members receiving instruction to over 2,500 in the past six years.
Scuba Now offers scuba certification, which normally costs hundreds of dollars, free of charge to any veteran who has earned the Purple Heart medal.
Maynard thinks scuba’s benefits have gone beyond just a fun hobby for him. “I attribute it to saving my life cause it kind of gave me meaning, gave me something to do again and now I just love it,” he says.
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These Veterans Choose to Fish Instead of Cutting Bait
For centuries, people have turned to this activity to achieve tranquility, enjoy camaraderie and decrease stress. No, not yoga. We’re talking about fishing.
It’s little wonder, then, that a new generation of veterans finds the activity to be therapeutic. As a result, organizations are springing up across the country to promote fishing among our nation’s heroes.
Take A Soldier Fishing organizes group fishing expeditions and offers civilians a chance to let military members and veterans know how much they are appreciated by treating them to a day where the only stress is whether or not the fish are biting. Currently, there are chapters in Oregon, Florida, Texas and New York. Prospective volunteers, as well as veterans who’d like to fish, can sign up via an online form.
And in Maine, veteran fishing clubs are proliferating, with the new organization Back in the Maine Stream joining two others already in existence. Disabled Air Force vet Marc Bilodeu and Vietnam Marine Corps soldier Bob Pelletier founded the club with the goal of coordinating fishing expeditions among disabled service members. Their inspiration? Project Healing Waters, a national organization that plans fly fishing trips for active military personnel and veterans.
Before a fishing trip six years ago, Bilodeu told Deirdre Fleming of the Portland Press Herald, “I had been very discouraged. I couldn’t fish because of my disability. They dragged me out on a rock, put a fly rod in my hand. I was kind of miserable. It took me an hour to catch a 3-inch bass. Then it was so emotional, I cried like a baby. And I realized, I was back, and who was gonna stop me now?”
The problem was that Project Healing Waters only came to Maine once a year, so Pelletier and Bilodeu started Back in the Main Stream.
During the fishing trips, Pelletier told Fleming, “Marc and I rag on each other a lot. We can. We had one veteran who lost his hands. When he came out of the washroom I said, ‘You wash your hands?’ He goes, ‘Yup.’ But he hasn’t any. He knows where I’ve been. I know where he’s been. It’s really hard to explain to people who haven’t been in the military. They don’t understand. But I know the sacrifices he made.”
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When Veterans Need to Let Loose, These Volunteers Help Them Ride the Waves
When you picture a surfer dude, you probably think of Hawaiian shirts, beach bonfires, ukuleles and a carefree attitude toward life. All of which is the opposite of the image that comes to mind when you think of a brave veteran wounded while serving our country. But the recent Waves of Valor Surf Camp proved that both vets and surfers can hang 10 together.
Sponsored by Team Red, White & Blue and the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, the event took place at the Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach, California on July 19. In total, four surf camps are scheduled for this summer, and this is the second year that volunteers have offered surfing lessons to veterans.
How do veterans learn how to surf? Each is teamed with four volunteers: a surf captain and three others on duty to fetch boards, help the service members mount the surfboards and assist with swimming when needed.
During the Huntington Beach event, the 17th Street Surf Shop closed for business for the day so its employees could volunteer — helping people such as Navy veteran Goldie Nwachuku catch a wave.
At first, Nwachuku was afraid but managed to stand up on a surf board for the first time. “It’s really good to have a smile on my face. I haven’t smiled in a long time,” Nwachuku told Ethan Hawkes of the Orange County Register.
Ryan Lee, Air Force vet, told Hawkes that surfing, “really helps relieve my stress, and it also helps me connect with the veteran community here and with the other volunteers.”
The program has proved so successful that for next year, organizers are planning a three-day surf event that will bring former soldiers from across the country to participate.
Whether the surfers can get any of the vets to yell “kowabunga,” however, remains to be seen.
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Put Your Hands Together for the Heroes Competing in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games
You’ve heard of the Olympic Games. And you’re probably familiar with the Special Olympics and the Paralympics. But have you heard of the National Veterans Wheelchair Games?
The games, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, has grown every year to become the largest annual wheelchair sports competition in the world. This year, a record number of participants — 660 athletes — have registered to compete in 17 different events that will be held from August 12 to 17 in Philadelphia.
One of the athletes is new to his sport: Ellwood “Woody” Allen of Philadelphia. During the Vietnam war, Allen served in Army and was stationed for much of his service at Fort Benning in Georgia, where he was a behavior-science specialist helping veterans returning from the war cope with what they had witnessed, what they had lost and how they would rejoin the civilian world. Two years ago, Allen lost his leg due to an infection.
After his leg was amputated, Allen was the one who needed help. As a means of recovery, he began cycling using a borrowed bike from a veterans group that sponsors adaptive sports.
Meanwhile, a Disabled American Veterans (DAV) chapter in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, was looking to donate an adaptive tricycle to a deserving vet. A member of the DAV, Bill Pinkerton, told Kristin E. Holmes of the Philadelphia Inquirer that they decided to donate a trike because, “it gives you mobility, hand-eye coordination and it gets you outside and meeting people. After trauma, you need to get out.”
A counselor at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center connected the DAV with Allen, who rejoiced over receiving the red adaptive tricycle. “The fact that they were willing to help somebody, I hate to say I feel emotional, because we’re grown men and we’re not supposed to,” Allen told Holmes.
Allen will compete as a member of the Philly Phever team at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. For him, victory will mean “not finishing last.”
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Splish Splash: This Aquatics Program Eases Veterans’ Transition Home
Fifty years ago, Dr. Jane Katz was a pioneering member of the U.S. synchronized swimming performance team in the 1964 Olympics, helping to promote the aquatic competition involving nose clips, coordinated moves, and big smiles that eventually became an official Olympic sport in Los Angeles in 1984.
Now Dr. Katz is using her years of experience in the water to rehabilitate veterans.
Katz, who teaches at John Jay College in New York City, developed her own swimming rehabilitation program after she suffered injuries in a 1979 car accident, eventually publishing many books and videos that teach her methods to others. For years, she also has been teaching swimming to NYC policemen and firefighters through her college’s Department of Physical Education and Athletics. And most recently, she decided to expand her WET (water exercise technique) classes to specifically appeal to veterans.
“I have found that many of the vets, regardless of age, have joint pain and as a result they stopped working out…Water is always great for healing,” she told Swimming World. Which is why in WETs for Vets, Dr. Katz engages veterans in exercises designed to help their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
“I don’t think the public has enough of an appreciation for what these vets go through when they return to civilian life,” she said. “It’s a very difficult adjustment, mostly from a psychological standpoint as many suffer from various degrees of post traumatic stress. The WETs for Vets program helps them in several ways. The workouts help relieve stress, and there’s a real camaraderie among the students because they share a common bond that those of us who have not been in combat cannot really understand. ”
Marine Corps veteran Marc MacNaughton told Swimming World that Dr. Katz’s class has been invaluable to him. “As I and others can attest getting in the pool makes coming home from war easier for our military service members, veterans, and their families…The unique program that Dr. Katz has designed has given us increased confidence, family and social connections, and to some, learning how to live with a new physical adaption. It has improved mental health for some of our veterans, and a few have shared with me even recovery from addiction. ”
FINA, the international governing body for swimming and aquatic events, recently presented Dr. Katz with a certificate of merit, which the deserving recipient can add to her many other rewards.
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Welcoming Wounded Veterans Onto the Field of Their Dreams
Doug McBrierty grew up on Cape Cod, a die-hard Red Sox fan. So when he returned from the Iraq war with a traumatic brain injury, it was a given that baseball would be part of his recovery, thanks to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Five years ago, the nonprofit gave McBrierty a $3,500 scholarship to attend the Red Sox fantasy camp in Fort Meyers, Florida. Even though he hadn’t played catch in twenty years, McBrierty felt welcome at the camp staffed with former Red Sox players.
“Ability didn’t matter,” McBrierty told Mary E. O’Leary of the New Haven Register. “They greet you with open arms. It’s like a family reunion every year,” he said. McBrierty, who is now a firefighter, struck up a friendship with Gary Allenson, a former Red Sox catcher who currently manages the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, a minor league baseball team.
Today, McBrierty attends the camp every year to help other wounded veterans play ball. “There are a lot of people there with disabilities, but they take the time to teach them,” McBrierty said. Rico Petrocelli, a former Red Sox shortstop and third baseman who helps at the camp, recalls a veteran who’d lost an arm in combat and learned to hit again, and another vet who walked with a cane, but “made a diving catch in right field.”
Now McBrierty, Petrocelli and others are working to raise money to send more veterans to baseball camp. Many former Red Sox pitched in autographed items for a silent auction that was held a couple of weeks ago in New Haven, Connecticut.
The Wounded Warrior Project funds a variety of adaptive sports experiences for injured veterans — from skiing to skydiving to scuba diving.
For those veterans who grew up dreaming of being on the baseball diamond, the chance to join the boys of summer at a fantasy camp can’t be beat.
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As Part of the Healing Process, This UFC Fighter Leads Veterans into the Wilderness
It goes without saying that mixed martial artist and kick boxer Stephen Thompson is tough. After all, he’s defeated all the opponents he has faced in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
But Thompson knows who the really tough people are: The brave men and women who serve in the military. Which is why he began volunteering with A HERO (America’s Heroes Enjoying Recreation Outdoors), which provides wounded veterans with mentorship and camaraderie through outdoor activities. He also works to raise awareness about the disturbingly high rate of veterans committing suicide.
“Hanging out with these guys, they are true heroes,” Thompson told Fox Sports. “You see the UFC fighters and they are fighting on TV and these kids or teenagers thinking that we are the heroes, but we are not. These guys are the heroes. They’re out there doing things and putting their lives on the line for us. Being out there and listening to their stories, sometimes it breaks your heart, but it makes you realize the risks these guys take and they are out there doing it.”
As part of A HERO, Thompson and his manager recently accompanied a group of wounded veterans on a wilderness and hunting expedition in South Africa. A show about the trip will be broadcast on the Sportsman Chanel in July.
“When I first met some of these guys they kept to themselves,” Thompson said. “Some of them came straight from the hospital after physical therapy, and at first we were there for a week and we were hanging out and they were kind of to themselves. By the end of the trip we shared some stories, and that’s what we were there for to give them somebody to talk to and experience this, and now I feel like we’ll be life long friends. I still talk to these guys today.”
Thompson plans to continue to volunteer with A HERO and embark on another hunting expedition next year. “It’s one of these things where I get to give back to these guys, who have put their lives on the line to enable me, you and everybody what we’re able to do. Our freedom. It’s just a way of giving back.”
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Cheer On These Inspiring Wounded Navy SEALs as They Reach for the Sky
Leave it to former Navy SEALs to decide that the best way to get their lives back on track following a series of health crises is to scale Africa’s highest peak: Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Twenty-six year old Will Cannon, of Houston, Texas, is one such climber. Cannon was a sergeant in the Army serving in Afghanistan when he lost his right leg (and his best friend) in an explosion. Unfortunately, his bad luck didn’t end there. After leaving the Army, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer and underwent radiation.
During the cancer treatments, Cannon’s spirits sank. But now that he’s in remission, he’s hoping to rejuvenate himself and others by joining a team of wounded veterans who plan to scale Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Cannon will be on hand to help two Navy SEALs who lost both of their legs in service — Bo Reichenbach and Dan Cnossen — complete the difficult ascent. (Cnossen, a Topeka, Kansas native, recently competed at the Paralympics in Sochi, Russia in Nordic skiing.)
Cannon told Roberta MacGinnis of the Houston Chronicle that it’s especially difficult for a Navy SEAL to cope with physical disability. “We are, in our minds, 10 feet tall and bullet proof. We are men. So whenever one of us gets hurt — loses his legs for instance — and we come home, you know, and what do we do? What are we supposed to do? At one point I was leading men into battle, and now I can’t even walk.”
The mountain climbing expedition is part of the Phoenix Patriot Foundation’s mission to bring together small groups of veterans to foster the military bond they miss when their service is over. Jared Ogden, a former Navy SEAL, founded the nonprofit and asked Cannon to join the expedition. The foundation has raised over $15,000 toward its goal of $50,000 to fund the expedition.
Reichenbach and Cnossen will use robotic prosthetics during the week-long climb, which is scheduled for this summer. Reichenbach told MacGinnis, “I’m proving to myself that I’m still capable of doing things that most people can’t do, even though I’m missing both legs from above my knees.”
Which just goes to show that even after injury, Navy SEALS are tougher than most of us will ever be.
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