Brett Gravatt: An Ability to Inspire

He realized, bit by bit, how his life would be forever changed as he lay in a hospital bed a few days after Christmas. As Brett Gravatt emerged from a painkiller-induced fog, his whereabouts and the realities of his future began making sense in the harshest ways.

He could not move his legs. He could not walk. He suddenly could not do so many things he never even thought about before.

Of all people, Gravatt had been defined by the lofty levels of what he could do, of what he aspired to become one day. He was a Big Ten soccer player at Penn State with goals of playing professionally. He wanted to be an Olympian. He wanted to coach for a living. He simply wanted to run because running was all he ever did from the time he could remember.

And yet these new realities slammed into Gravatt as they would most any 19-year-old athlete discovering they were paralyzed from the waist down after a freak snowboarding accident.

Soon enough, though, he began a rather stunning transformation. He formed a resolution and course of action that continues to impress those who know him best, from those from his hometown in northern Virginia to doctors in Charlottesville and Atlanta, and all the way to the State College community.

He promised to conquer new goals rather than focus on what he suddenly could not do.

It’s as if he’s embraced becoming something greater now than he could have ever been before.

Photo via Brett Gravatt/Instagram

Brett Gravatt remembers only flashes of the night that forever changed him.

He had just finished a comeback soccer season, one built on the intense training at the IMG Academy in Florida, a year at powerhouse Akron University, and finally that transfer to Penn State. Once a Nittany Lion, he recovered from a torn meniscus in his knee, gradually working his way into the lineup last season.

He earned a start against his former Akron teammates, and then, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, he stunned most every one, including Penn State head coach Bob Warming, by scoring the game-winning goal.

He finally felt settled in his college choice. His knee was strong again, and his soccer future looked even brighter. And a five-day holiday vacation with his family in the Virginia mountains seemed the perfect way to relax and celebrate it all.

He and older brother, Christian, would start things off with snowboarding at Liberty Mountain in Lynchburg, Virginia, before meeting their parents the following day. Brett had already been snowboarding that week with his sister. It was the day after Christmas, and he remembers starting that run and going off a “fairly decent-sized jump, nothing extreme, maybe 15 feet in the air.” He can tell you that he lost his balance taking off and landed awkwardly on his back.

Mostly, he can recall only snippets from what happened next, including being loaded into the ambulance and emergency workers cutting off his clothes. As he was being rushed to a hospital, his mother, Lora Gravatt, received the first alarming phone call about her son’s injury. She and her husband quickly packed the car and headed out, changing their plans en route when another call informed them that Brett was being transported to the university hospital in Charlottesville because of the severity of his condition.

Soon after arriving, they learned he had broken five vertebra but had crushed his T-6 and had lost all sensory abilities on impact. Doctors performed surgery just after midnight to stabilize his spine and allow as much healing as possible, inserting two rods and eight screws.

The family was told surgery would not alter his paralysis.

Early on, faith steeled them all, says Lora Gravatt, a pastor at Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church, Virginia. She broke the news to her lead pastor and, soon after, text messages and phone calls began pouring in from all over, carrying prayers, blessings, and offers to help in any way possible.

A couple of days after the accident, Warming showed up for support. Then came members of his soccer team and even a best-wishes phone call from US soccer star Landon Donovan.

Lora Gravatt would certainly not focus on false hope for a complete recovery. Instead, she told her son that God had prepared him for these moments his entire life. That he was better equipped than most anyone possible to not only handle his life changes but also flourish through them.

Sure enough, only a few days after his surgery, with 30 staples holding his back together and no movement from his torso down, he stunned therapists by learning how to get in and out of bed. He had to relearn how to brush his teeth, put on socks, and shower, with brutal waves of pain crashing through it all.

“Everything they asked him to do, he just did it. It’s not only just his strength but his will — his strength of character,” his mother says.

His drive intensified after being transferred to a rehabilitation hospital in Atlanta. In a way, he called on his past for support, from everything he had done to become an elite soccer player.

In high school, even before moving to the IMG Academy, his social life was spending time only with teammates. He would watch pro soccer games on TV and then mimic the players’ moves for hours in the backyard.

Before arriving at Penn State, he injured his knee playing for the DC United’s Under-23 team. He rehabbed so diligently that he spent much of last fall urging Warming to put him into games ahead of schedule. And when he finally got his chance … It was frigid last November 20 at Jeffrey Field, Penn State and Hartwick tied, 1-1, late in their first-round game of the NCAA Tournament. And then Gravatt had control of the ball. He beat one defender, faked a crossing pass, and cut inside. He beat another defender and shot with his left foot, about 15 yards out.

The ball curled toward the goal on a magical arc, around the goalie, and into the upper-left side of the net. He had scored the game-winner to send his team to the next round of the tournament. It would be the only college goal he would ever score. Ask Warming about it now, and he’ll describe it most succinctly: “That was one of the best goals I’d ever seen live. The way he beat and cut up those two guys with step-over [moves] … and to hit the ball left-footed with so much power, to hit it at a spot no goalkeeper in the world could get to? And that’s no goalkeeper.

“That’s an amazing goal. This is one when you just thought, ‘That was a piece of art.’”

Photo of Brett Gravatt via Onward State

As Gravatt pressed hard into his rehab in Atlanta last January, he was overtaken by a way to turn his entire situation around. He focused on how his injury and future actually could have been much worse — and that he was fortunate to own a head start in battling through it all. He could have suffered a brain injury. He could have died.

“I had it easy. I was an athlete before and in great shape. I could learn anything [the rehab staff] taught me in a day,” he says. “The guy or girl next to me would take a week to learn it. They weren’t in good shape or their injury was worse. I mean, there are people who are quadriplegics who can’t use their hands. At least I still had my hands ….”

By his second month of recovery, he was forging his own new routine and was lifting weights and looking into adaptive sports — sports for those with disabilities. And, most fortunately, the constant, intense pain began to subside.

The next steps were more daunting, though. He vowed to not only return to Penn State as a student but also to stay involved with the soccer program and even continue his own athletic career.

Penn State has one of the more advanced ability- athletics programs in the nation. Sports include wheelchair basketball, swimming, powerlifting, and track and field. By the end of May, Gravatt was back at Penn State and focused on wheelchair racing. He now trains six days a week and already has competed in events in New Jersey, Indiana, and Oklahoma. He also won the pentathlon at a junior nationals event. He wants to be racing marathons by next summer, all part of a plan to reach the Paralympics in 2020.

“I just wanted something day-in and day-out, a goal to achieve, and that was always something in soccer,” he says. “It was something I needed to find again.”

Just as importantly, he’s stayed close to the soccer program. He works 30 hours a week editing practice and game video and acting as a sort of assistant coach and team motivator.

He drives a car every day to class with specially fitted controls, taking apart his wheelchair every time he gets in.

“You become very patient, and life’s a little slower now,” he says with a laugh.

But is it really?

Some figured it would take Gravatt a year or two, if not longer, to adjust to his new life and begin competing again. And yet, “he goes to a couple of events and is just tearing it up,” Warming says.

Penn State ability-athletics coach Teri Jordan, a former American record-holder in the 5,000 meters and longtime Division I track and field coach, now coaches Gravatt daily and is stunned by his progress.

“In some ways, I think he’s going to change the face of being an athlete with a disability,” his mother says. “And that’s going to be a positive.”

Warming struggles to find the words to describe Gravatt’s ongoing recovery.

“The only thing to tell you is that he’s been an absolute inspiration to everybody he’s around,” he says. “You make the most of your life, of your situation, that’s the inspiration.”

Gravatt is working on a communications degree and may still coach one day. For now, he lightens up the soccer office with the kind of attitude that considers being in a wheelchair an icebreaker in social situations. More than anything, he believes he is growing as a person from everything he’s been through — that he truly is on his way to becoming something he never could before.

\”Before, I used to think I’d have it rough or something small would affect me,” he says. “But now, my tolerance for the little stuff has gone up. Now, I’m able to enjoy those little things and see that happiness is a choice.”