Title:
Unyielding Spirit: Jason Tabansky’s Road to Paralympic Gold

Subtitle:
Archery Champion Jason Tabansky: A Story of Resilience and Triumph

Transcript:

Alycia Anderson: Welcome to pushing forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice each week. We will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.

Let’s go.

I’m Alycia. And today we have Paralympic gold in the house. I’m so excited. We have gold medalist in archery, Jason Tabansky.

Jason Tabansky: How’s it going?

Alycia Anderson: It’s so good to see you again. Thank you so much for being willing to sit on this with me. I’m so excited.

Jason Tabansky: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Alycia Anderson: So I want to give a little context of, I’m going to just go ahead and call it out our friendship and how we met because we recently just met on, literally on the streets of Paris, right after you won the gold medal, we were like crossing the street and Marty is famous for every time he sees what he calls us wheelers.

He wants to stop me. And have some conversation. And so I’m pretty sure that’s how the conversation began. I might be wrong, but we were literally crossing the street in Paris and we meet you and your lovely, amazing partner in crime and archery and in life, Courtney, and we ended up talking in the middle of the street.

It felt like for an hour. Yeah. Yeah, it sure was. And you started telling us your amazing story. So I’m going to give you a short introduction, but I wanted you to share everything about you because you are your life story is so cool and so powerful. So I’m really excited that you were willing to do this.

So I said, Jason had just won Paralympic gold. Your journey began in The military service. Thank you for your service. I can’t wait for you to tell this story. And you have since become a professional Paralympic athlete in archery. And I’m excited to hear your path with disability, if you don’t mind, your path in the military and how we have gotten to where we are today.

So can we start with your career in the U S army and your tour, like maybe you can paint a picture of your career, your military career, and then also share a little bit about your disability, whatever you’re comfortable with. That I believe entered your life around 2015.

Jason Tabansky: Yeah. I’ll take you back to the beginning. I’m an only child, grew up in a single parent home in South Texas. I decided to join the military when I was 17. I was a senior in high school and Where I come from, there wasn’t a lot of opportunities that were, that was catching my attention.

So I didn’t know what I was going to do. I definitely didn’t want to go to college cause I hate school. I was one of those guys that I could ace a test without studying because I hated homework, but I was just a really good test taker. So I took a test for the military. I took the ASVAP. I scored really well, decided to join the army right after graduation.

I spent. I actually spent the summer at home. That’s how I picked my job, which which job was gonna let me spend the summer at home. And, joined in August of 2001 when I was 17. Turned 18 in basic, went through 9 11 in basic training, then my tech school, and, Next thing you know I served a tour in Afghanistan in 2002, came back home, went to Iraq in 2005 through 2006, went to South Korea after that, and I was there for three years, but in that period of time, I met my wife, Courtney, she was teaching English there, she’s a, She’s Canadian and was doing a, there’s a lot of English teachers in Korea.

So she chose to go do that. And, we just met on a very random night that had no intentions. I had no intentions of meeting anybody. I just wanted to go show my friends around. And next thing I met her and we haven’t been apart since. May 24th of 2008. But got home from Korea and I was stateside for three years, decided I needed to get back out, went to Germany in 2012.

And that included another tour to Afghanistan from 2012 to 13. And In 2015 while stationed in Germany, my friend Ryan and I were the two senior crew members. So I was a helicopter mechanic and I was a crew member instructor and flight crew. So Ryan was the senior instructor. I was a senior platoon sergeant and also a crew instructor.

And there was this mission to London to go showcase our helicopters and try and sell them to the rest of the world at this big expo. So Ryan and I pinpointed as the two senior guys go to London, set up shop, having a great week and towards the end of the week, I was rushing down the aircraft after covering it up and the beautiful London rain.

And I I missed the step and slipped, fell on my feet from about five ft off the ground, yanked my shoulder really hard. And I thought that was the end of it. Just, I’m gonna be sore tomorrow. But I woke up the next day with shoulder pain and neck pain, and that kind of got under control with some meds.

The following day, I woke up with upper back pain, and my neck was frozen. So I actually went to the ER, got seen, got a little bit stronger pain meds. No issue, went home, went, or went back to the hotel, went to work. Got done with the expo. We’re packing up now. It’s the weekend. It’s saturday morning. We were supposed to go fly aircraft and reposition it to a military airfield because the place where we’re at had shut down and everything was packed up.

So I get up in the where I wake up in the morning and I go to sit up and I can’t like my body’s frozen from the waist up and freaked out a little bit because I can’t move from the waist up. I asked my friend Ryan, he was also my roommate. I said, Hey man, can you help me stand, grabs my hand, helps me get on my feet and I landed on my knees.

I just, the pain was unbearable couldn’t handle it, couldn’t move. Ryan went to work. I stayed back. I called an ambulance actually and went to the E. R. Again, same E. R. Got seen. They gave me some muscle relaxers and painkillers and send me back on my way. They they refused to do imaging at the time, even though I was requesting it.

But the doctor thought that I just had some muscle damage, some straining. He thought I was gonna be fine that I just had to go back to Germany, see a doctor there that night I woke up at 3:30 in the morning, 4 o’clock, as my body was shutting down. And again, I freaked out because I didn’t know what was going on.

I thought I was having a reaction to medication. Thinking that, I’ve never taken it. I believe it was Valium that they gave me. I’ve never taken this. It’s affecting me. I need to go to the hospital because I’m having an allergic reaction or something. But the ambulance crew showed up and that next hour I went from sitting up in bed to being completely paralyzed and becoming a quad within an hour.

Got taken back to the hospital, run through imaging and everybody freaked out because they thought I had a hemorrhage from C four to T four. Got rushed into surgery, came out eight hours later and doctor said that I had a massive epidural abscess from C four to T four that was compressing my spinal cord and had bruised my spinal cord.

And, he just gave me a deer in the headlights look and said, I really don’t know what’s gonna happen. I can’t tell you what your Your prognosis is gonna be because this is extremely rare and we have never seen one in this hospital. So, we’ll see what happens the next couple weeks.

When I came out of surgery, I wasn’t able to move from the shoulders down. I was extremely paralyzed and, I freaked me out a little bit because I couldn’t move my arms. I could move anything. I could shrug and I remember that night. I just went back to sleep. I got, it was my first day out of surgery still going through pain management.

I got really drugged up that night and went back to bed and woke up about a day and a half later and Courtney was there. She had gotten flown in. She’s at my bedside when I woke up. I just remember looking at her and my first instinct was to wave at her and Picked up my arm. It’ll work. I was like, oh, okay.

That’s new Doctor came in and I said, hey doc and he saw that and he was surprised. He said, okay, that’s a good sign That means that things are gonna start healing back and going back into place and he told me he said I don’t Know how much you’re gonna get I don’t I’m not here to tell you that you’re never gonna walk again But I’m here to tell you that you’re probably not gonna be running a marathon in your lifetime.

So we’ll see what happens. And yeah, through the next six months, I got transferred from London to Germany to Walter Reed in D.C. Finally transferred me to a spinal cord rehab here in San Antonio. And I went through five months of intense rehab and they taught me how to live again.

They taught me how to manage basic life in a wheelchair. But for me, that was a really big turning point in my life because that’s where I discovered adaptive sports.

I hung on to adaptive sports as a new purpose and new reason. And, adaptive sports gave me goals.

And. those goals help better my life. Yeah that’s how I went from being a, an only child in South Texas to being in the military for 15 and a half years, got to travel and see the world and, do a whole bunch of really cool stuff and meet a lot of really awesome people that have become my family and are still part of my life.

And then, going through injury, going through that transition finding a new purpose and a new goal in life. And, just making the best of it.

Alycia Anderson: You said a couple of things that are so beautiful. So I want to repeat it. Number one, I love that you woke up and you saw Courtney, like your relationship with Courtney is so beautiful and you two have such a powerful partnership.

And so for you to have that moment where you wake up and wave to her and your body is starting to recoup and work is absolutely beautiful. And it almost shows like the power of love a little bit. So it’s so beautiful. And then also I feel like that mission to find a new goal. It feels like that’s the kind of person you are in, 17 going into the military, climbing up the ranks, like having all of these massive achievements being overseas and.

Going to Afghanistan and all these places to serve for us and so powerful. And then you have this injury and you go to rehab and you’re like, okay, what is my next goal? It feels like it’s inherent in you to have something to strive for that. Is big and powerful and strong. And so congratulations on just being resilient and that way too.

It feels like it’s inherent in who you are. I’m just assuming. But I see the dots connected, how did you find archery? It’s for me, archery seems like such a foreign sport and it was so cool to meet both. Of you and Courtney. ’cause you both are archers, I think I’m saying that right and are really good at it.

Like how did you go from finding adaptive sports to finding a specific sport that you end up excelling in to the highest level?

Jason Tabansky: So believe it or not, archery is one of the most common. sports out there. Archery was the original sport for the Paralympics.

Alycia Anderson: Oh my God. Fun fact of the day. And

Jason Tabansky: it was actually started at Stoke Mandeville in London or in England.

Sorry. That’s how it started. That’s how the Paralympics started.

Alycia Anderson: Will you say, will you tell us really quick what Stoke Mandeville is? I think that’s a great educational moment for Stoke

Jason Tabansky: Mandeville is one of the. probably one of the best, if not the best spinal cord rehab facilities in the world.

And it’s in England. That’s as far as I know, is where the Paralympics started

In the early forties. And it started with an archery competition. One of one of the doctors saw a bunch of disabled military members there, people are coming back from World War Two and stuff and he decided that he didn’t want to see them rot away and just not do anything in life and gave them purpose and put bows in their hands.

And next thing they have this big tournament and that evolved into today’s modern Paralympics.

Alycia Anderson: That is incredible. I didn’t know that I love that story.

Jason Tabansky: Yeah, so archery is widely available to everybody because it truly is a sport that you can adapt to you. The bow is just a piece of equipment that wants to be shot and You can go and research different Paralympians.

There’s people with no arms that shoot with their feet. There’s people that shoot with their mouths. There’s people that shoot with shoulder harnesses that they’ve created or adapted, things like that. And the thing with adapting archery to you is you can’t just go to a store and buy these adaptations.

It tests your creativity and your imagination. And it, it really pushes you to come out of your shell and do something amazing for me.

Alycia Anderson: Wait, before you go on, I like what you said, just said to about, it pushes you to adapt and figure it out. And I’m assuming that translates into life as well.

Okay, I have this new body. How else am I going to adapt with it? No,

Jason Tabansky: honestly, and I’ll touch up on that because this show will reach out to people who are going through disabilities and stuff like that. I understand that life has changed. I understand that you’ve gone through a major traumatic injury or event that has put you in a new normal.

Some people are born with it. And honestly, I think people that are born with a disability have a better A better mindset and a better grasp on their life than somebody that, goes through a spinal cord injury or goes through an amputation and stuff like that. But at the same time, I’m also here for the tough love.

I got a lot of suck it up buttercup. Because either you’re gonna let life pass you by. Or you’re going to go and create opportunities, seek out opportunities for yourself. You’re going to have to learn to live a new normal. You’re going to have to learn to adapt because, the world is not going to adapt to you.

For the most part, you’re going to have to find ways to adapt to the world and. live a new life. And we saw it just that day that we met in Paris. We’re trying to get into to that lobby and either we were going to jump some steps to get in. Or luckily we found a ramp that was hidden in a step.

But that’s just the way the world is. You can sit at home and waste away or you can say, you know what? Screw it. I’m gonna go out and live my life to the fullest. And for me, that was a big thing. I was not just gonna sit at home and, wallow in despair of Oh, I can’t believe I’m in a wheelchair now or this or that.

And I took what the doctors told me to heart. And I and, if he doesn’t give me a timeline, then that doesn’t exist in my mind. I’m just going to live life until one day I wake up and go surprise. I can move my legs. And if that doesn’t happen, then I’m going to wake up one day and say, man, I put thousands of miles on my wheels and live life to the fullest.

So it’s just one of those things that you’ve got to find something. And for me, finding archery was actually a gift that I. didn’t think I was gonna, I was gonna be able to use. And it all started with recreational therapy when I was going through rehab. My rehab, my rec therapist was signing people up for the National Veterans Wheelchair Games, and I saw that you just started working with PVA.

PVA sponsors the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. They have it once a year in different locations throughout the country and it’s seven to eight hundred veterans that are wheelchair bound, whether it’s amputation, spinal cord injuries, TBI, strokes, you name it, they’re there. So I went to my first one in 2016 in Salt Lake City and my journey to that was my rec therapist goes, okay, we got to pick five sports for you.

Let’s go with air rifles. Let’s go with nine ball. Let’s do trap. Let’s do bowling. He said, how about we try archery? And I laughed. I said, look man, I used to bow hunt when I was able bodied and I shot a bow and I haven’t shot in four years, four and a half years. But I tried to pick up a bow the other day at the store and I fell over.

So there’s no way I can do that. And I just, I can’t do archery.

And that led to two of my absolute. best friends that have been my mentors through injury. They were sitting in that room that day, and they both looked at me and said we don’t ever want to hear you say never.

We’re gonna teach you how to do this. So they strapped me down to a chair, taught me how to shoot. And, I want to go into that Wheelchair games in Salt Lake City. And I won my division that year

That catapulted me to another another tournament that I signed up for and won that one.

And it just kept on snowballing until one day. And I want to say summer of 2017, I told Courtney, you know what? I want to try this for real. I want to give it a go and see if I can make it to Tokyo. And yeah, the rest is history. I just, I fell in love with the sport. I fell in love with the community was very accepting.

And the para community that shoot archery and travels with the U S team, half of them are military. So I had my brothers and sisters back

and I also

had other people that I was meeting and training with and competing with But it’s just, it kept on giving me little milestones that I wanted to reach.

So I wanted to shoot better. I got to be stronger. I’ve got to have more endurance. So I got to go to the gym. I’m traveling to Europe and doing this stuff. I’ve got to navigate places that are not a hundred percent wheelchair accessible. I’ve got to make transfers that I’m not used to at home because I’ve got everything.

So guess what? I gotta change my diet. I gotta lose weight. I gotta become more flexible. I’ve got to get back into physical therapy because I had stopped going to PT. I I just decided I was going to live life and let life be my physical therapy. And that’s cool. It’ll happen, but you’ve got to have some kind of movement.

Through a rehab center or something. And for me, it just helped me stay healthy to help me stay injury free and help me stay mobile. I was knocking out all these goals because Archery was giving them to me. And my ultimate goal was Paralympic games.

Alycia Anderson: What I love about that before we get to the Paralympics is.

What you just said is such a great learning lesson for every disabled person. Really, any person that’s listening to this is that we’re not all going to be Paralympians. I never was a Paralympian in tennis, but what it does do is help you maintain your body and help you be as Proficient in it as possible, as long as you can.

And I think that is such a powerful lesson and it is the power of Paris sports and move and really just finding something that you enjoy doing that gets you out moving in some way or using your mind or whatever it might be. So I love that you just made that connection. Cause I think it’s very important.

And from let’s talk about gold. Like you make it all the way, first of all, you and Courtney starts. I know the story. Courtney starts becoming an archer herself. You two start traveling around the world, doing this amazing being professional athletes, right? Representing our country and being top of the game and congratulations for number one, that, that is so cool.

You get to Paris and I’m not even sure if Paris was your first gold or not. So you can say that. But what was it like? Tell us, what was it like winning gold? Let’s talk about that for a minute.

Jason Tabansky: So Paris was extremely special because I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I I had not qualified to Paris through the conventional means we have, Three tournaments that we can qualify and get a spot to Paris and I came up short and all of them by 1.

2 points, just heartbreakers that I didn’t qualify, but I kept on competing. I kept on going to tournaments. I kept on, working on my world ranking, things like that. In my mind, I’m not quitting until the first arrow is shot in Paris and then I know that I’m not going to be there.

And in June, I got a call that. Somebody had gotten hurt and had to withdraw from the Paralympics and I was the next highest ranked Archer so that spot was coming to me and I got it six weeks before going to Paris. I got that call you know it turned into six hours a day, seven days a week of training

I finally get to Paris and I felt ready. I felt prepared. I trusted my training. I’d done everything that I possibly could have done. I couldn’t, I wasn’t out there worried about my equipment because I was confident in that. I just wanted to maintain. So we get to Paris and Everybody that I talked to their goal was oh, I want to win gold.

I want to win gold and in my mind I was like, okay, cool Good for you. I’ll be happy with a top five finish. That was my goal. Just finishing the top five, show the world that you were meant to be here. Don’t let somebody else’s sacrifice go to waste because somebody was suffering. By not being there.

And they had earned that spot. And I, I understand because that’s happened to me before. It happened to me for Tokyo where I couldn’t go and somebody else went. And, I sat at home and watched and it hurts. So I understood that somebody was going through that and I didn’t want to let that go to waste.

So I just wanted to go out, do well. And when I get down to the elimination day, my matches just, they were going really smooth. I was in a. I was in a groove, the crowd wasn’t bothering me, my mental game was on point, my focus was on point, and I just kept progressing and progressing, and it didn’t hit me until after I won my semi final that, holy crap, I’m going to a gold medal match.

I’ve never been in this position, and this is crazy, I looked at the coach and I said, man, we’re going home with something, regardless, and he said, yeah, man, You’re in the gold and I think a minute or two before going out on that stage I looked at him and I said, you know what we didn’t make it this far to go home second I’m gonna go out there and just lay it all out and you know I went out shot as best as I could I Had shot nerve free and cool the whole time until my last three arrows That’s when the nerves hit and realized that I’m going into this last round ahead it’s up to me to lose it And that thought came in my head.

I shook it off as fast as I could and then shot the three best arrows I possibly could and came out on top.

Alycia Anderson: Oh my God. So yeah. Like listening to this, you need to go and go to Jason’s social media. We’re going to leave all his information, his website, all that on the show notes, just the images of you shooting and winning and Courtney, just the whole thing is just.

Talk about a picture says about million trillion words. Like it’s so incredible. And, I think you’re such a, you’re such a kind, sweet person and soul. And I feel like you’re just a great representation for us as disabled people and athletes. And just like the way that you portray yourself and give like when we were in the middle of the street in Paris.

Kids would walk by, right? And we’re chit chatting. You stopped a kid. This was my, I think this is my favorite moment of Paris out of everything that we got to do. We’re in the middle of the street. These kids are walking by. Jason literally has his gold medal in his pocket. And this little guy or girl, I can’t even remember, I think it was a little boy, walked by, and Jason stops him and goes, Hey, do you want to see something cool?

And he, the kid goes Yeah, and he pulled Jason pulls out his gold medal, which was incredible to see in person. I was a fangirl myself and these kids their faces lit up like they were seeing Michael Jordan like it was so incredible how what a moment that was for them. And it came from your heart.

In such a beautiful way and that impact right there that you’re giving gifting other people is gonna they will never forget that moment and how cool and talented you are as a human being and I think you’re such a great representation of that for the military, for humans, for society, for our world, for the sport.

So thank you for just like being that type of person. It’s so beautiful. Seriously.

Jason Tabansky: I just, I really enjoy interacting with people and especially kids because kids are our future. I work with a lot of kids with disabilities here and I want to shape them up, not just necessarily for archery, but for whatever sport they want to do, because we’re not going to be around forever and we need to have replacements.

And, I want them to experience the things that I’ve experienced and go out and leave their stamp on the world.

Alycia Anderson: So I love that’s part of like your future and coaching and all that you do what is the future hold? What are your goals? Where are you hoping for all of this to go?

What’s the North Star?

Jason Tabansky: I’m going to continue shooting. I actually fly out to Mexico next week for a tournament. I’m back at it. And then next year. Going to South Korea for world championships and a couple other tournaments before that. So just going to take it one shoot at a time and keep grinding and, making a name for myself.

Alycia Anderson: You’ve definitely done that. And I love that. Taking it one shoot at a time. So that’s like a little like hashtag or something. I know it’s really good. Yeah. Is there anything else that you want to share?

Jason Tabansky: I just, I always encourage people to reach out and talk to people, let everybody know that, if you’re going through something, there’s help out there, there’s other opportunities for you.

Life is not over. One of the things that I live by, and it’s something that I told myself when I was going through my transition in my injury that night yeah. And it’s a little motto that I’ve always, that I’ve always told myself. And I never like to think, why me? It’s more of why not me?

I’m not someone more special than the next person next to me. So what makes me feel what makes me feel pity is not it’s not something that’s going to drive me down. It’s going to motivate me to say, you know what? Whatever, man I was given this injury. I was given this platform because I can handle it and I’m going to make something great out of it.

So yeah.

Alycia Anderson: That’s beautiful. That feels like a pushing forward moment. Why not me? I love that. And I think that’s a great motto to live by. And that sounds like something that would motivate me myself. So I love it.

Jason Tabansky: Jason,

Alycia Anderson: thank you for being my friend. I’m so happy. I’m so happy our paths cross. Honestly, I can’t wait till I get to see you both again.

It was such a joy and an honor and so cool to meet both of you and then spend as much time as we did together. I think it was like meant to be. So we’ll see where the friendship goes to. Congratulations on being a gold medalist Paralympian.

Jason Tabansky: Thank you. Oh my gosh. It still hasn’t sunk in.

Alycia Anderson: Okay. I’m going to leave all your information in the show notes.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for being a wonderful human. And thank you to our Pushing Forward community for joining in on this. Paralympian gold conversation and we will definitely see you on the next episode. This has been pushing forward with Alycia and that is how Jason and I roll on this podcast.