Adaptive sports helping to give Jacksonville-area disabled veterans new hope

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded $8 million in grants to help fund sports programs to aid disabled veterans.

Approximately 10,000 veterans nationally are expected to benefit from the VA grant money. Action News Jax spoke with local veterans who say adaptive sports helped them accept and then conquer the challenges of their injuries.

“When I first got injured, I thought it was over 'cause I was paralyzed from the neck down,” Navy veteran Henry Sawyer said.

It was a devastating new reality for him.

“I couldn’t barely hardly push my wheelchair. My wife and kids would push me around,” Sawyer said.

Sawyer said for a while, he didn’t feel like doing much of anything but then he was invited to try adaptive sports. That eventually led him to wheelchair rugby. Since then, he’s competed in five Warrior Games and two Invictus Games, the most recent in Toronto.

“You’re not only healing the person, you’re healing the unit,” Bill Hannigan, the adaptive sports specialist for the Wounded Warrior Project, said

The Wounded Warrior Project is one of the partners for the organization Genesis Health Development, which is receiving grant money from the VA.

“You’re back out there as teammates, in the foxhole taking this on. 'OK, I can’t do it this way, but how can I do it?' So now, we always look at what I can do,” Hannigan said.

It's a mindset that’s helped Sawyer keep fighting far beyond the field of competition.

“I have five boys and I have a wife at home. Just getting out here and competing here and allowing their kids to see their dad still fighting after injury, that gave everybody hope that no matter what’s going on, you can overcome,” Sawyer said.

Navy veteran Gabriel George was in a crash that forced him to medically retire from the Navy.

“I was leaving Bible study that night. I woke up in the hospital three weeks later,” George said. “Said I wasn’t going to walk again. Said I wasn’t going to use my arm. I was just in the house all the time.”

But that changed two years ago when George found adaptive sports, which allowed him to get out and learn to bike, kayak and even surf.

“It's transformed my life. That brought the smile back to me,” George said.

And adaptive sports has changed his life far beyond sports.  He's a father again, living in the moments that he once thought he’d lost.

“It gives you hope that, 'OK, now I can spend more time with her,' and not just me sitting in the house watching TV while she wants to play or, 'Daddy can’t do this, Daddy can’t do that.' It’s just, 'Let's do it. What do you want to do? Let’s sign up for it. I’m going to find some way to get it done.' It’s wonderful,” George said.

Cox Media Group