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

Object Details

Douglas, Christopher

Bauer

Description (Brief)

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.

Location

Currently not on view

ID Number

2015.0230.01

accession number

2015.0230

catalog number

2015.0230.01

Object Name

hockey stick

hockey stick, adaptive sports, ice hockey

hockey stick, winter paralympics

Physical Description

wood (overall material)

fiberglass (overall material)

metal (overall material)

plastic (overall material)

Measurements

overall: 95.8 cm x 6.35 cm x 2 cm; 37 23/32 in x 2 1/2 in x 25/32 in

See more items in

Culture and the Arts: Sport and Leisure

Sports & Leisure

National Museum of American History

web subject

Sports

name of sport

Ice Hockey

web subject

Adaptive Sports

level of sport

Amateur

paralympics

web subject

Disabilities

Record ID

nmah_1764458

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0

GUID (Link to Original Record)

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746b2-5b65-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa