Hockey stick used by Chris Douglas of the USA Hockey Paralympic team

Custom made ice hockey stick used by Chris Douglas while trying out for the USA Paralympic hockey team and throughout his career with his Florida based team, the Space Coast Ice Bandits. The black stick is a modified Bauer brand stick which is cut off from the top and a metal spur like device is screwed to the end for digging into the ice to propel the player across the ice. The other end of the stick end is covered in red tape.

Chris Douglas was born with spina bifida, a birth defect that left his spine underdeveloped, and led a relatively active childhood until a corrective spinal cord surgery in March of 2001 left him paralyzed. As a result, his involvement with adaptive sports didn’t begin until 2011 at age 19. Constantly fine-tuning his equipment to stay competitive and fit his specific needs, Douglas became an unexpected innovator and an advocate for technological advancements in adaptive sports equipment. With Douglas as a starting forward, Team USA won the gold at the 2015 International Paralympic Committee Ice Sled Hockey World Championship

The first Paralympic Games were held in Rome in 1960, a week after the Summer Olympics. This tradition of holding the games for athletes with disabilities after the Olympics continues today. These first games were for wheelchair users only, but in 1976 athletes with other disabilities were welcomed. In that same year adaptive athletes from the Winter Olympics were also embraced. The 1996 games in Atlanta marked a turning point as the first games to fully include the Paralympic athletes and events under the Team USA banner.

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