When faced with tragedy, most people put their lives and dreams on hold or give up and accept their circumstances. Then there are people like Kevin Polish who cannot bounce back fast enough and immediately work towards making the best out of the cards life has dealt them.
Kevin Polish Jr. was born in Carmichaels, PA and discovered his passion at the age of three when his father began teaching him the basics of archery. Thanks to his father owning a pro archery shop, he had everything he needed to get a head-start in the sport. By age eleven, Polish was competing and won his first World Championship in the Youth Division.
“I put in four to nine hours per day – every day – judging distance and shooting at targets,” Kevin said in an article for Wheel Life.
By fifteen, he knew he was ready for more serious competitors and to earn some real checks. After signing the papers and agreeing to put all the money he won as a professional archer into college scholarship funds and trust funds, Polish became the youngest archer to be allowed to shoot against the best of the best. In the process, he picked up a number of sponsorships, signing onto his first at the age of sixteen.
While feeling on top of the world in his career, an incident in October of 1999 altered Kevin’s life forever. He was with a friend driving on a dirt road on the way to hunt when a flock of turkeys appeared in their path. He swerved to miss the flock and went off road down a 100-foot bank where the car hit a two-foot tree stump, causing the car to jackknife and roll about ten times.
“When I was flying through the air, the thought popped into my mind, ‘Wow, this is cool. I’m flying,’” Polish added.
Polish was thrown about 37 feet up in the air until hitting the tree that broke his back in two separate places. When help finally arrived, the Jaws of Life had to be used to pry the tree open wide enough to get him out.
In the hospital, Polish was told he would never again be able to sit up or stand up, and that he could never participate in archery again. He informed them they were wrong and worked out in physical therapy eight hours a day, sometimes until passing out.
“When I woke up, I’d say, ‘Let’s go work some more,’” Polish said. “I had to completely relearn how to shoot the bow with my new body.”
Within six months of leaving the hospital, Polish competed in the 2000 World Archery Tournament in Las Vegas to shoot in the Pro Division and took second. He participated in four more World Championship contests that year and ranked in top fifteen archers in the world. He became the first disabled athlete to compete in a World Archery Tournament against athletes that were not disabled in any way. Since then, he has finished first in a World Championship in Puerto Rico in 2017, ninth in the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, and recently finished his second Paralympic Games in Tokyo.