Disability: Paraplegic & Double Amputee
Where you live: North London
In 2008, at 21, I severed the spinal cord and was paralysed from the waist down. A year later I found myself at the Inter-Spinal Unit Games, at Stoke Mandeville, and was introduced to “Sledge Hockey”. (Apparently I had some talent for the sport.)
Through 2011 I worked on the National Governing Body – BSHA to help recreate the league in the UK and joined the Peterborough Phantoms – where I remain today.
Jump forward again to Oct 2022 and I came to the end of a long journey, going into hosptial for a “Bi-Lateral Through-Knee Disarticulation”, leaving me a below knee double amputee, which means that I had a bit of a “hard reset” in the sport. I no longer “turned like a battleship” on the ice, but instead had the nip and zip to be a decent winger for the team.
All this rambling, is to come to the point that getting back on the ice in December 2022 reminded me why I play – freedom.
Moving on ice is like no other sensation. It is freedom from the confines of the chair, even if I am an (over)active chair user. The sledges level the playing field and it is on skill alone, whether you are a single amputee, paralysed, able bodied, old, young… whatever. Everyone is in the same… er… sledge.
It’s hard, fast, and physical and that appeals to me, but it is also so different to anything else in my life. Being part of a team can be like having another family, with all that entails, but I know one thing, the Phantoms are my home, and I might be “The OG Phantom”, but I’m also #40 and that gives me purpose.