“That was my first experience kind of the first time being away from home, being away from Mom and Dad,” Pauls stated. “That was definitely weird. I was a super shy kid, I didn’t really talk a whole lot. And then the next year I came back, and my coach kind of looked at me after one of the games, and was like, ‘Man, when you came here last year, you were one of the worst players out there, and now, like, you’re one of the best.’ That was the kind of moment where I was like, ‘All right, maybe I have a future in this.’”
Kevin McKee, who’s one in every of Pauls’ greatest mates and has gained three Paralympic gold medals, met him on the U.S. improvement camp and stated he may additionally inform immediately he was meant for large issues.
“He’s a couple of years younger that me, but even at that time you could tell that he just had the drive and the willpower to do whatever it took to get there,” McKee stated. “At that time, a young kid, just energy, just wanting to go. That was kind of his role when he first made the national team was on the third line, just give energy for the team at the time, and I think he was perfect for it.”
Sled hockey was invented at a rehab heart in Stockholm, Sweden, in the early Sixties. It was launched on the 1994 Paralympics in Lillehammer, Norway, and has been there ever since. Players are in sleds that sit on high of two hockey skate blades and use two sticks, which have steel picks on the butt finish, to assist propel themselves.
And like in the boys’s and girls’s ice hockey tournaments on the 2026 Olympics, there shall be loads of motion and hitting in the Paralympics — with one massive distinction.
“When the men and women get hit into the into the boards, the glass moves. The boards don’t,” Pauls stated. “We’re not tall enough to get hit into the glass, so the hits are fierce. And, I mean, it’s so fast, it’s so much faster in person. I’ve never seen anybody come out of a live sled hockey game and been like, ‘Eh, that was OK.’ Everybody’s always enthralled with it.”
Pauls received his first style of worldwide sled hockey on the 2009 World Championships in Ostrava, Czech Republic. At age 16, he was the youngest member of the gold medal successful team. The subsequent yr, he made his first look in the Paralympic Games, successful the primary of 4 straight gold medals for the United States, repeating the feat in 2014 (Sochi), 2018 (PyeongChang), and 2022 (Beijing). He was captain of the team in 2018 and 2022 and shall be captain once more in Milan.
“He’s just matured and became such a great leader for our team,” McKee stated. “To me, he’s the best captain we’ve ever had.”
The longest-tenured U.S. nationwide sled team participant in his seventeenth season, Pauls has represented his nation in the World Championships 10 occasions (seven gold medals) and performed in 15 Para Hockey Cups (11 first-place finishes).
And now he’s going for one more Olympic gold, attempting to comply with up what the U.S. women and men did in Milan.
