ALMOST EVERY WAVE IS OVERHEAD WHEN YOU’RE LYING
prone on a surf board, but these waves? They tower four to
six feet above the 13 riders on the water. The group—many
of them first-time surfers—chatter nervously while grip-
ping their boards. Then, a “Get pitted, bro!” erupts across
the water from a smiling Roy Tuscany. He sits on a board,
paddle in hand, “sharing the stoke” as he calls it. With
every incoming set, every aborted ride in, every crash
into churning foam, Tuscany doles out congratulations
and high fives.
The surfers are from all over the country. The ocean outside
San Clemente is just another stop on a much larger journey.
Somewhere along the way, each of them experienced a traumatic
injury, often to the spinal cord or head, sometimes a wound from
war. Now they’re returning to sports—and Tuscany is right
there with them.
It’s been more than a decade since the aspiring pro skier
launched 130 feet off a 100-foot ski jump at Mammoth Moun-
tain in California. He burst his T12 vertebra and had two plates,
two rods, and eight screws put on each side of his spine. In an
instant, his days of competitive skiing and coaching were over,
his plans for the future to work as a mason gone, along with his
mobility from the waist down. But his community in Truckee,
California—colleagues from Sugar Bowl (the resort where he
worked), families he coached—as well as friends from his home
state of Vermont stepped up to help. After two years, people had
chipped in more than $85,000 for Tuscany’s medical bills. “All I
had to worry about was recovering,” he says. And thinking about
how he could get back to skiing.
After nine days in the ICU and 43 days of in-patient rehab,
Tuscany headed home, having relearned to walk with the help
of two arm crutches. He still had months of physical therapy
to go. Just 23 months after his injury, he headed to the moun-
tain, jammed his feet in boots, pointed his skis downhill—and
fell, over and over again. But he persisted. He learned to use
outriggers, small skis about a foot long that fit onto the end
of specialized ski poles. They helped him turn, carve, and
decelerate as he made his way down the mountain. “Adapt and
overcome,” he says.
With skiing conquered, he turned to other sports. Soon he
was mountain biking (he tied the front of his bike to the seat
post of a buddy’s bike and the friend would pull him up hills),
f ly fishing, and playing sled hockey. To surf, he learned to use
a waveski, a specialized board propelled by a kayak paddle. But
he wanted more. “It just hit me I needed to pay it forward.” He
wanted to help a large group of people, the way others had helped
him. So he went to a bank with a Social Security check and a lit-
tle bit of raised money, and started his foundation, High Fives.
The organization’s aim is to help athletes get beyond their phys-54 December 2019