FOX CHAPEL, Pa. — Like many kids, a Fox Chapel grad had Olympic dreams, and he turned them into a reality in 2014.
Sled hockey player, Dan McCoy, showed us his Olympic gold medal from the Paralympic Games in Sochi.
“All I could do was just stare at the medal,” McCoy said. “I was kind of at a loss for words and immediately. All I thought about was everything it took to get there.”
The 28-year-old said from the moment he told his parents he wanted to win a gold medal at just 8 years old, his whole family was committed to making his dream come true.
McCoy was born with spina bifida, which left him partially paralyzed in his legs.
He started playing sled hockey, an adaptive version of hockey, at the age of four. He got serious about the sport as a teenager playing for the Mighty Penguins, a local sled hockey league.
McCoy made the U.S. National Sled Hockey team when he was 16 and went with that team to Sochi to compete in the Paralympics in 2014, where his team won gold.
“This sport and the Paralympics in general can change people’s minds in a way stop people from treating people with disabilities as fragile, or less than a human,” he said. “A lot of us, especially in the adaptive sports community, love having a disability. I would not have a gold medal, I would not have the experiences I’ve had, had I not had this disability.”
McCoy has shared that gold medal experience with kids at schools and he continues to inspire them as a senior player and coach of the Mighty Penguins.
His first sled and Paralympic jersey are up at the Heinz History Center.
“He’s a great role model and example of what determination, and belief, both by his family and himself, and desire to succeed at the highest level can produce, said Ann Madarasz, Director of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum.
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