When Eric Newby was young, he dreamed of being a professional athlete. Somewhere down the line—maybe mid-teens, he says—he shifted to wanting to follow in his father’s and grandfather’s military footsteps.
But in 2006, during the night of his high school graduation, Newby was out celebrating with friends. As they left the party, he and three others piled into a friend’s pickup truck and took off fast, at around 100 mph, trying to catch up with the rest of the group. “At one point, I turned to look forward and saw this truck that was half in the ditch and half on the road,” Newby recalls. “My friend swerved and overcorrected. There just happened to be a concrete post about 3 feet high, and we hit it head-on and went end-over-end three times. During one of the flips, the roof caved in and hit me on top of the head.”
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Newby had broken his neck. The minute the world stopped spinning, he recalls, he knew that he was paralyzed. “I was kind of slumped down into the floorboard of the truck, and I remember my legs felt like they were asleep and real heavy, like the pins and needles when your feet fall asleep,” he says. “I tried to shove the door open, and my head kind of just fell to the side. I knew exactly what was wrong with me. I just told them not to let my head move, and I waited till the ambulance got there.”
About five weeks after the accident, Newby was in rehab. A therapist showed him the documentary Murderball, which follows athletes who play wheelchair rugby. A few days later, a woman named Sue Tucker, the head coach of the St. Louis Spartans wheelchair rugby team, approached Newby at St. Louis gym Paraquad.
“First, she asked to see my hands, which I told her was a weird thing to say to somebody,” Newby says with a laugh. “But to play wheelchair rugby, you have to be quadriplegic, so you have to have impairment in three out of four limbs. She told me the USA team was putting on a developmental camp in St. Louis the following weekend and said, ‘You should come check it out.’”
Newby fell in love with the game immediately, and that childhood dream of playing professional sports burst back to life. “I’ll never forget the first time I sat in a rugby chair,” Newby recalls. “It kind of felt like I was flying, compared to the hospital chair that I’d been in for the last few weeks. I felt like an athlete again. And that drive I had lost in high school just kind of fired up all over again.”
Today, as a two-time Paralympic silver medalist, Newby is preparing to go to Paris with aspirations to win his first gold. And this time, he’s leading the team as co-captain.
Newby—who wakes up at 4 a.m. to start his day as both a dad of two and a Paralympian—says the prep work is all about dedication. His morning routine starts with a visit to Alton’s Club Fitness to lift weights, then back home to do hill sprints or cardio. He starts getting his daughter ready for school around 7:30 a.m. And then he looks for ways to fit in workouts amid his kids’ schedules.
“It’s intense,” he says. “A lot of people think it’s dedicating yourself in the gym or being motivated all the time, but it’s a grind. There are days when I don’t want to do any of it, but I know I have to, and I think of my teammates or think about our past results at competitions, and it always fuels me. Or I think about my kids and how I want to make them proud in Paris, and it lights the fire all over again. It’s more than just liking to work out; it’s learning to love all of it: the gym, the repetitions, the mental psych, eating right all the time. Every single part of my day that I’m not just completely enthralled with my kids or my wife is dedicated to rugby.”
Newby hopes to impart these lessons to his 1-year-old son and almost-5-year-old daughter. “I want them to know that no matter what cards you’re dealt, life’s still great,” he says. “Life’s still worth living. From these Games specifically, I want them to realize that hard work really pays off. My daughter knows how often I work out or when I come home sweaty and get her up every morning. I leave for long training camps and competitions, and I just want them to know that all that time and dedication that I’ve spent is paying off. And that they can do it too when they get older and put their mind to something.”
Newby explains his daughter being old enough to recognize that her father is competing at such a high level is only one reason that this Games is different than the others in which he has competed. “When I went to Rio [for the Games], it was my first Games, and I was still a rookie and was just focused on my role and my job and didn’t really have to worry about anything else. And then the Tokyo [Games] came, and I was a role player again. But now, I was voted on by my peer athletes to be team captain, and that is a whole new level of responsibility. I really take that role to heart. I worry about everybody’s role now. When I was a rookie, I looked at our captains as these great, stable minds that are always calm and collected, and I want to carry that through.”
Newby says this team, in particular, is a special one to lead. “We had a lot of people retire after Tokyo, and now we have this crazy mix of older veterans and a lot of young blood,” Newby says. “We have a kid who just turned 18 on our team, and we have a guy who’s 45. My favorite part is how close we are on and off the court. It’s just a group of really good friends that happen to be really good at a sport.”
Newby, who currently lives near Alton, credits his rugby career in large part to the St. Louis metro area. “St. Louis is the home of the St. Louis Bombers wheelchair rugby team, through an organization called the Disabled Athlete Sports Association. Without them, I don’t think I ever would’ve found rugby. And if not for rugby, my life would’ve been totally different. Rugby made me stronger and put me with a group of people that were in a very similar situation that kind of showed me the ropes, and I think that was huge for my wellbeing and my independence in everyday life. I mean, I met my wife [an occupational therapist who studied at WashU] through rugby in St. Louis, and that’s why I have my kids. So yeah, the St. Louis metro area supporting an organization like DASA, which then supports our team, is an incredible asset.”
Newby says he hopes to encourage people to watch the Paralympics with the same interest as they watch the Olympics. “The sports are just as intense,” he says, “and the athletes are just as physical, just as dominant.”
As for Newby, the future beyond Paris is unknown. “I’ve been playing for 18 years now,” he says. “The body’s beaten and battered. My heart loves rugby and still wants to be involved in rugby. But it might be time to be a dad and take a coaching role. It’s all up in the air right now, and part of it depends on how we do. Part of it depends on how my body holds up, and part of it depends on what my family wants.”
Newby says he’s full of gratitude. “I consider myself super lucky. I know that is kind of hard to say after you had a tragic car accident that left you paralyzed. But I think that opened a lot of doors for me,” he says. “I feel very lucky—blessed, however you wanna say it—to be where I am now and the position I’m in with rugby and with my life.”
