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Injured Veterans Use Athletics to Recover

Posted on: Sunday, 3 July 2005, 15:00 CDT

MINNEAPOLIS - Eight months ago, Ramon Guitard lay in an Army hospital bed, his legs nearly blown off by roadside bombs in Baghdad. He thought his life was as good as over. But not long after, at the urging of his therapists, Guitard watched a doctor demonstrate wheelchair slalom and was intrigued enough to try another activity: hand cycling, a bicycle powered with the arms.

This past week, Guitard joined hundreds of other veterans competing here at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. Guitard, a high school athlete in football and track while in high school, took on what he calls his new athletic challenges: bowling and 9-ball pool.

"The more active you are, the less you dwell on your injuries," said Guitard, 22, who lost one leg and had to have the other fused after the October attack. "You're putting your life together again."

The games have been around for 25 years, organized by Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Department of Veterans Affairs to boost veterans' confidence. Tom Brown, a recreation therapist who helped found the event and still directs it, said participating in sports makes veterans feel better about life.

"Once they get out there and see all the other guys doing the same thing, they stop saying 'Oh, poor me,'" Brown said.

"These people here - they're over their injury," said James Crosby, 20, a Marine from Boston who suffered a spinal cord injury during a rocket attack in Iraq. "You learn a lot from people who have been in the chair for a while."

According to organizers, 19 of the nearly 500 competitors were veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan.

During a practice wheelchair basketball game, Crosby got pointers from Wayne Miller, a Marine from Silver Spring, Md., who lost one leg in Vietnam. Crosby struggled at first, even tipping over his wheelchair, but Miller cheered from the sideline as Crosby made a couple of baskets.

"You did great," Miller told Crosby afterward. He also offered a safety tip: "You have to get a seatbelt."

Miller, a VA social worker, said he tries to encourage young soldiers coming home with war injuries to get involved with sports and spend time with other injured veterans.

"They don't feel like they belong anymore, because they had to leave their unit," said Miller, 54. "There's the same sense of belonging here as there is in the military. ... Their men just changed. This is their new unit."

His view was supported by Alan Lewis, 24, a double amputee Iraq veteran who also participated in the practice basketball game. "I'm feeling some of that brotherhood that I miss so much," said Lewis, of Milwaukee.

Some of the tips Guitard received from other bowlers helped improve his game, he said. He scored 261 over three games, breaking 100 on his second game.

"I never thought in a million years I would be bowling again," Guitard said while holding daughter Alecia, 13 months, and watching wife Melissa and daughter Shaunta, 5, take a turn on the lanes. "I'm bowling better in the chair than I did on foot."

Along with helping veterans feel better about themselves, getting them active in sports makes them less likely to be hospitalized, Brown said. That means potential savings: The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $29.1 billion on health care last fiscal year.

An estimated 103,000 U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan needed care through the VA this year - more than four times the number the VA had expected.

As he watched a group of older veterans wheel around the basketball court set up in a Minneapolis Convention Center hall, Crosby said he was grateful for their encouragement.

"Sports saved them from sitting around and drinking all the time. I'm inspired by them," he said.

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On the Net:

International Veterans Wheelchair Games: http://www1.va.gov/vetevent/nvwg/2005/Default.cfm

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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