Wheelchair curler Steve Emt’s path from drunk driver to Paralympian : NPR

American Steve Emt competes in Sunday’s mixed doubles match against Italy, which the United States won.

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Anyone watching the Winter Paralympics has probably noticed Steve Emt, who, along with Laura Dwyer, is representing Team USA in the first-ever mixed doubles event of the Games.

Their performance was one thing: Both men reeled off three dramatic round-robin wins in a row to reach the semifinals, marking the first time the United States has qualified for a medal round in wheelchair curling since the 2010 Paralympics.

After losing to Korea in the semifinals, Emt and Dwyer will face Latvia on Tuesday in the bronze medal game, hoping to win the United States its first Paralympic medal in wheelchair curling.

But it’s their teamwork and attitude on the ice that really sets them apart. Emt, in particular, charmed the Internet, with his booming baritone delivering a steady stream of encouragement to his doubles partner and demanding the granite stones they slide (“curl!” “sit!”).

“I have three older siblings. I was always on the basketball court and getting beat by them, so I had to assert myself on the court, around the kitchen table, everything,” he said when asked about his deep voice this week.

Steve Emt and Laura Dwyer made sure to celebrate their victories, of which there were many throughout this wheelchair curling mixed doubles round robin.

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Although Emt, 56, is competing in a new event, he’s no stranger to the sport: The ten-time national champion and three-time Paralympian is the most decorated Paralympic curler in U.S. history.

But he didn’t know what curling was until he was recruited off the street a little over a decade ago.

Emt, who is 6 feet 5 inches tall, was spending a day in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 2013 when a stranger with slicked-back hair approached and asked if he was local. Emt replied that he lived in Connecticut and suspiciously asked why.

“He said, ‘Well, I’m training with the Paralympic rowing team here in Cape Town. I saw you go up the hill over there. With your build, I could make you an Olympian in a year,'” Emt recalled, referring to his wheelchair. “And I heard ‘Olympics,’ I was like, Let’s do it. What is curling?”

After their conversation, Emt drove home and did some research, confirming that curling was not related to weightlifting, as he initially suspected.

“I went back two weeks later and threw my first rock, and it bit me,” he said.

Soon after, Emt was making the two and a half hour drive to Massachusetts to spend the weekend training with this stranger turned trainer, Tony Colacchio. He made the U.S. wheelchair curling team in 2014 and competed in his first world championship in 2015. Emt made his Paralympic debut in Pyeongchang in 2018, five years after that fateful meeting.

Emt, speaking to reporters in October, said curling changed him as a person, softened him. But the existence of sports as a competitive outlet for disabled athletes changed his life.

Emt had been a star high school athlete, a West Point Army cadet and a UConn basketball player before a drunk driving incident paralyzed him from the waist down at age 25.

“I’m an athlete…I need to compete and nothing has happened in my life,” Emt said. “Seventeen years after my fall, I had a hole, and then [Colacchio] came and pushed me to practice this sport. »

At this point, Emt had spent years working as a middle school math teacher, high school basketball coach, and motivational speaker. The latter has held his full-time job for nearly a decade, taking him to more than 100 schools across the country each year. He tells these teenagers about the chance Colacchio took with him, encouraging them to “be a Tony”.

“Go sit with that kid at lunch who’s sitting alone…smile [at] someone in a hallway, take your head out of your phone, take your head out of the ostrich,” he continued. “We’re all going through something…and a simple ‘hello’ or ‘hello’, it could change their day. It could change someone’s life. »

Why Emt is now sharing his story

This is the third Paralympic Games for Emt, which is already eyeing Salt Lake City 2034.

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Emt hasn’t always been so willing to open up. For the first six months after his 1995 accident, he told everyone that a deer had run in front of his car rather than admit that he had gotten behind the wheel drunk.

“I was lying to myself, I was lying to everyone around me,” he said. “I didn’t want kids in my hometown, around the state and around the country to think of me as a drunk driver. I wanted them to think of me as a stud athlete and a great person.”

Emt was a “stud athlete”: his high school basketball, football, and baseball skills made him a star in his hometown of Hebron, Connecticut, and earned him a spot on the West Point basketball team.

But he abandoned his studies two years later, after the sudden death of his father following a heart attack. He returned home to Connecticut and eventually enrolled at UConn, where he joined its famous basketball team, joining future NBA greats like Donyell Marshall. Emt said, laughing, that he had 38.7 seconds of playing time in his two years.

Emt was wearing his Big East championship jacket the night of his 1995 accident, which he said left him for dead on the side of the highway. When he awoke from the coma a few days later, he learned he would never walk again.

And he didn’t want to tell people why, until a journalist contacted him six months later to tell his story – and encouraged him to be honest. He said the opportunity to “tell the truth” helped him accept what he had done and forgive himself.

“That’s my label: yeah, I’m a curler, yeah, I’m a public speaker, yeah, I’m a drunk driver,” he said. “I’m in a wheelchair because of a drunk driving accident, and I want you to know that and I want you to learn from me.”

Emt started motivational speaking about eight months after his accident, and he’s been doing it ever since. He calls it his therapy.

He says curling – which involves shaking hands with competitors instead of speaking loudly to them – has helped him slow down and appreciate the little things. Moving to Wisconsin and the calmer pace of life in the Midwest also helped. And he says he cherishes the platform curling has given him.

“I want people to know, ‘Hey, when you’re ready to talk, I’m here for you.’ This is what I do, from my speeches to my curling, whatever it is, there are so many opportunities to be successful again,” he said. “When you wake up and you’re told you’ll never walk again, you wonder: What do I do now? … And I just want people to know that there are so many possibilities, so many things to do.”

Emt, the oldest Paralympic athlete on Team USA, initially aimed to compete in three Games. But he’s now considering even more, as he’d like to compete on home soil in Salt Lake City in 2034 (two Games away).

“I’m going to be around 90 years old to compete in the Paralympics,” he laughed.