Injured Marine finds new ways to fight
— -- Josh Sweeney was a high school hockey player and, later, a Marine Corps sergeant who served in combat as a sniper for an advance scout unit similar to a SWAT team. But until he stepped on an improvised explosive device while on patrol in Afghanistan in October 2009 and lost both his legs, he had never heard of the Paralympics. That didn't happen until a friend at the San Antonio rehabilitation facility where Sweeney was recovering took him to see a local sled hockey team, the Rampage.
And Sweeney's life changed unexpectedly. Again.
Having found himself back around things he had wrongly thought were lost forever -- the familiar sound of his skate blades scratching on ice, the wet-leather smell of the rink locker room, the sound of the ref's whistle, the speed of the game and collisions -- Sweeney recalls smiling at his friend and saying, "Yep. This is me."
By March, Sweeney was a forward and co-captain for Team USA, and he scored the winning goal in the Americans' 1-0 victory over Russia in the gold-medal game at the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi. On July 16, at the 2014 ESPYS in Los Angeles, Sweeney, 27, will be honored with the inaugural Pat Tillman Service Award for his commitment to helping others find a way to navigate their own paths out of difficulties -- perhaps through sled hockey, or maybe through the sort of perspective shift he went through and actively shares.
"Being disabled, I never thought I'd be able to do something like this," Sweeney said. "Getting a Purple Heart [as Sweeney did] is great and all, but being able to go to the Paralympics and represent my country in a different way is better.
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