A Friend and an Olympian

It was recently called to my attention that a former hockey teammate and a good friend of mine, Nick Springer, is going to be competing for the United States in the 2008 Paralympic Games being held here in Beijing beginning on September 12th. The first game is on the 12th, and the final game for gold, which almost certainly will be widely televised, is happening on the evening of the 16th of September. He is competing for the United States in a sport commonly called "wheelchair rugby," but which is known as "quad rugby" by those that seriously follow and play it. (Nick is furthest to the right.)

Some of you may know a bit about quad rugby from seeing or hearing about the Academy Award-nominated documentary, Murderball, that appeared in theaters a couple of years ago. The sport consists of two teams wielding wheelchairs covered in metal, with each team trying to carry a volleyball the length of a basketball court in order to move the ball into the opposite endzone to register points. Any fan of contact sports, and sports in general, would absolutely love this game. Some of the collisions generated by these armored players ramming into one another at top speed are absolutely shattering:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6GGKYqkC4c

Regardless, neither watching nor playing this game is for the faint of heart.

Nick played goaltender on a hockey team I played for in middle school. During one summer while we were both in high school, Nick came down with an extremely rare bacterial infection that was fast-moving and nearly claimed his life. He made it through the ordeal, but his limbs needed to be amputated to stop the disease from claiming the rest of his body. Instead of having the rest of his life claimed by this horrific disease, Nick turned his love of hockey into a love for another sport: quad rugby. He's been training now for years looking to make it onto the Olympic team, and now a dream of his has come true.

The final step, of course, is claiming gold in Beijing. After being favored in 2004 in Athens (as they are this year), the U.S. team took home bronze, making them doubly hungry this time around. If you have a chance, please browse around the internet or your cable box at some point on or before September 16 to see if you can pick up some of the games. I'm going to try to get tickets for as many as my schedule allows over here in Beijing. Either way, please check out the official U.S. Quad Rugby Association site to learn a little bit more about the sport and about this year's representatives at the Beijing Games. Here's a link to the main page

http://www.quadrugby.com/

and to the team's home page.

http://www.quadrugby.com/usteam