Pitt student continues quest at 2014 Paralympics

Pitt’s Dan McCoy wheeled his chair up the hill that is De Soto Street to get to Sutherland Hall, weather and foot traffic be damned.

The Pitt shuttles’ routes often didn’t align with his schedule, so he took the next-“best” route. 

“He would literally grind it up the hill in his wheelchair,” his father, Mark McCoy, said.

When the situation allowed for it, Dan McCoy would work his way up the steep slope building by building, navigating hallways and using the assistance of elevators until reaching the top, his dad explained. 

Dan’s methodical efficiency when completing a task as mundane as returning to his dorm room in Sutherland mirrors the approach he has taken to achieve his biggest goal in life — reaching the Paralympics.

The 20-year-old, who lived in the upper-campus dormitory last year, uses leg braces to walk and a wheelchair to get around because of his spina bifida, a birth defect affecting the lower half of his body. McCoy has spent more than a decade working toward competing at the pinnacle of disability sport in sled hockey. 

“It actually helped his training and his conditioning during his freshman year, being on campus,” Dan’s father said. “It was a fantastic workout.”

McCoy’s completion of his goal is near.

He is part of the United States sled hockey team competing in this year’s edition of the Paralympic Games, which begin Friday in Sochi, Russia, and go until March 16. The team arrived there Sunday.

A unique competition

The Paralympics are the equivalent to the Olympics for people who have physical disabilities, similar to the Special Olympics for those with mental impairments. There are winter and summer versions that take place at the same venues as their namesake a couple weeks after the Olympics conclude. 

All sled hockey athletes will play games in Shayba Arena, where the women’s hockey games were played a few weeks ago.

This year is the first time selected events will be shown live or on tape delay in their entirety on American television, with NBC holding the broadcast rights for the games as it did for the Olympics. 

There are five winter Paralympic sports: wheelchair curling, biathlon, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing and sled hockey.  

How some of McCoy’s teammates qualify for their sports differs. A number are amputee former military members who suffered injuries while serving, others become amputees after motor vehicle accidents and some others experienced birth defects, like McCoy. 

But all have lost most, if not all, use of the lower half of their body.

Sled hockey differs from stand-up hockey in a few ways beyond what the name suggests. It is played by people sitting in dual-bladed contraptions using smaller hand-held sticks in either hand that have metal points attached for traction and creating momentum. 

Current U.S. head coach Jeff Sauer guided the University of Wisconsin to two Division I men’s ice hockey national championships during his 20 years in charge at the university, and he hasn’t changed his approach while coaching in the Paralympics. 

“I have done nothing different with this team that I wouldn’t do with a college team or a pro team: same type of drills, same activities on and off the ice,” Sauer said. “I pull the string on ’em when I’m mad at ’em and get at ’em to work harder.”

But there’s one noticeable off-ice experience that isn’t shared — making it onto the ice.

Sauer said that it is not easy for the players to get from the locker room to the ice, but he added, “Once they get on the ice, it’s like a new world to them.” 

“Some of them have to crawl, some of them have to go in their wheelchairs. It’s just a struggle to get to the ice surface,” he said. “But once they get there, they fly.”

Speed and physicality are aspects of the game that stick out to Sauer, especially given the hard material of the sled and the close proximity of the players to the ice and boards.

Rinks used for sled hockey have inclines that allow for smooth transitions from bench to ice and vice versa. 

One of the few differences in gameplay between these two forms of the sport is that players in sleds cannot skate backwards. This inability dictates how defense is taught; all of the instruction focuses on angling and forcing people to the outside. 

And yes, fighting happens.

McCoy’s challenge

Back to those treks up the hill last year:

In inclement weather, McCoy often found himself having to get out of the chair and push it up the steep incline, providing what his father described as rich comedic material for stories McCoy told his family. 

That said, his resolve in achieving his main objective is anything but laughable.

McCoy hasn’t spent much time in Oakland lately. He’s taking this semester off and lived at home last term in nearby Cheswick, Pa., while taking a reduced courseload — necessary decisions in order to train full-time and travel to all of the team camps and warm-up competitions against other countries. 

His degree in rehabilitation science and sports medicine can wait. 

“[Playing on the U.S. team has] been my goal since I was 8 years old,” McCoy said. “School will always be there.” 

His parents agree.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Mark said. “[We’re] 100 percent committed to helping him do whatever he needs to do to achieve that dream.”

Since last summer, McCoy and the rest of the players on the national team, who range in age from 15 to 35, have traveled to Toronto, St. Louis, Madison, Wis. and Williamsville, N.Y., once, as well as Charlotte, N.C., a couple of times.  

Camps happened monthly, running from Thursday to Sunday during the fall. And then starting in mid-January, McCoy and 11 teammates took up residency at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., for three weeks of intensive on- and off-ice training. The entire team convened there for a couple of days for practice before flying over to Europe on Friday. 

As a member of the team since 2010, the forward’s exercise routine has increased in intensity, too, since he made the provisional squad of 18 for Sochi last July.  

After beating out 43 other hopefuls in a two-day tryout to make the team’s initial roster, a typical week of training for McCoy consisted of two to three days in the gym with a professional trainer doing a combination of weight training and cardio focused on only his upper body that involved rowing machines, ski ergs and weights.

He spent the same amount of time on the ice working on agility, speed, puck handling and shots.

Despite having made the initial roster, McCoy hadn’t yet finished what he set out to accomplish. With one last cut to the squad planned for December to cap the final travel roster at 17, nothing was final. So the regimen continued.   

Since January, the workouts have gotten more frequent, with visits to the gym almost every day and time on the ice also increasing to three to four times a week. 

McCoy plays locally with the Mighty Penguins sled hockey senior team, a group he captains and practices with twice a week.

The mentor

Fellow Mighty Penguin Josh Wirt grew up in western Pennsylvania and won a sled hockey gold medal as a center with the U.S. Paralympic team in 2002 in Salt Lake City. 

“It was after [Wirt] showed the players on the local team his gold medal in 2002 — I was 8 years old — that I set my goal on someday playing for Team USA,” McCoy said in an email.

The two have known each other since 1998, when both attended a sled hockey clinic put on by Shriners Hospitals for Children in Erie, Pa., and later shared the ice and interacted during Mighty Penguins practices. 

But their relationship took on another dynamic in 2009 after McCoy’s mom, Angie, asked Wirt to serve as her son’s mentor, and they began playing together on the Mighty Pens. Wirt had been on a break from the sport since deciding to attend Pitt-Johnstown in 2003. 

“I had taken so much time off, I had lapsed a lot and lost a good bit of my abilities,” Wirt said. “I think we were probably pretty even at the time. Dan worked his butt off and skyrocketed way past me a couple years later.” 

Since, Wirt has watched McCoy’s rapid improvement.

“He’s become a far better player than I ever was, so I’m incredibly proud of him and what he’s accomplished,” Wirt said.

The busy training schedule is something McCoy’s older brother Andrew, a first-year medical student at Drexel University, thinks became ingrained in his brother when he first made the National Development Team — a reserve, or feeder, team for the national team — in 2008.

“That’s what usually separated the guys that were on the national team and the guys that were on the junior team,” Andrew said. “Dan saw that a lot of the guys on the national team, they had a workout schedule or a regimen [along with] eating nutritional foods and that kind of stuff.”

Two years later, McCoy debuted with the senior team, scoring his first goal in his first appearance at that level, a contest against Canada on Oct. 14, 2010. He was named the country’s Rookie of the Year for the 2010-2011 season and has been a mainstay on the roster since, making 49 total appearances for his country. 

 Sauer has coached the U.S. national sled hockey team for the past three seasons, taking over after the 2010 Paralympic Games. 

“I tell them all the time. They have more weapons than an NHL player has because they can stick handle with both hands and shoot the puck with both hands,” he said.

McCoy has made himself ambidextrous through drilling. He’s now as good at handling and shooting the puck with his non-dominant left hand as with his right — a development Wirt has seen often.  

“He’s probably one of the better guys or one of the guys who uses it more frequently on the national team right now,” Wirt said. “[McCoy’s] definitely a lot better defensively and a lot more responsible in that end of the game, as well.”

What’s to come

Sauer has worked him as a defensive forward against the other teams’ best forward lines, but McCoy has also killed penalties and featured on the power play.

“He’s become an integral part of [the team],” Sauer said. 

Wirt sees the level of dedication McCoy has demonstrated as imperative in the current ultra-competitive climate of the sport.

“If you don’t have the time to commit to it like that, 110 percent, you’re not gonna make it,” Wirst said. “You really have to commit your whole life to being a Paralympic sled hockey player. It’s gotten that serious in this country.”

That’s becoming truer than ever before with the sport bgaining popularity.

“Back in 2002, it wasn’t as big. It hadn’t taken off yet,” Wirt said. “Now it’s so big that if you don’t commit 110 percent, someone else is and they’re going to take that spot from you.”

 The competition extends beyond tryouts. Only 15 players will dress for a given game and, as in stand-up hockey, only six take the ice. 

Ten other forwards made the trip, but McCoy won’t dwell on what he cannot control. The attitude he adopted after that all-important time seeing Wirt with his gold medal has set him on the right path.

“I haven’t looked back since,” McCoy said.