Former Milton Academy hockey player continues to grow stronger 3 years after accident – Boston News, Weather, Sports

CANTON, MASS. (WHDH) – Former Milton Academy hockey player Jake Thibeault, now 21, is marking the third anniversary of a bad accident on the ice.

On Sept. 4, 2021, Thibeault suffered a spinal cord injury during a Milton Academy hockey game. The injury left him paralyzed from the waist down, but he knew in that moment that he was going to fight.

“I always knew it wasn’t going to stop me, the paralysis aspect, and I made that statement when the neurosurgeon was right next to me and told me the severity of my injury and that ability to fight,” Thibeault said.

He trains at Journey Forward in Canton, working physically and mentally toward his goal to walk again.

“I truly don’t have a bad day, because I’ve shifted my perspective in these three years. “The fact that just getting up in the morning is a good moment, the fact that I can come here and battle paralysis four days a week is a good moment,” Thibeault said.

One of the aspects of his life he doesn’t take for granted is being a part of the Babson College hockey team.

“I am a teammate like any other one of those guys on that team,” he said. “When they go to practice to be a better hockey team, I go to practice to walk.”

And Thibeault is moving forward day by day. In 2022, he walked to get his high school diploma from Milton Academy, one year after his injury.

“My goal is to walk at Babson and receive my degree on my feet with less assistance than I did when I walked at Milton. Who knows, but I am going to do everything in my power and everything I can control to make that happen,” Thibeault said.

He is working hard to show others that there is hope. Thibeault is overcoming the odds as a star hockey player who continues to steal the show.

“Hockey is a passion of mine and always will be, probably the passion of my life, and my identity, but my purpose is something we are going to try to strive to find every day,” he said.

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