Amputee athlete amazes
EDUCATION: Speaker Shayne Smith inspires Queen Elizabeth Public School students
At about the 10-minute mark of his presentation, after warming the students up with stories about his celebrity friends and freestyle battles with Canadian rapper Drake, Shayne Smith sits in his wheelchair in the centre of the gymnasium and demands some answers.
He was four months old when he contracted meningococcal septicaemia, a form of sepsis that caused toxins to release into his blood and forced the amputation of both legs, most of his left arm and half of his right hand.
“When you guys first walked into the room and saw me here, how many of you guys, the first thing that pops into your mind was cripple, amputee, physically challenged?” he asked the audience at Queen Elizabeth Public School Thursday morning. “Put your hands up high.”
A handful of brave students raise their hands.
“So we have less than a quarter of a room that’s honest,” Smith replies, as the crowd laughs.
“So let’s try this again, how many people, when you first look at a guy like me think disabled, cripple, amputee?” he asks again.
This time all hands pop up in the air.
“I want you to keep your hands up high until I change your mind,” Smith said.
It’s at this point Smith, a retired national wheelchair basketball player, ably jumps out of his chair and performs a handstand, then grabs his wheelchair and hoists it over his head with one arm.
Not one hand remains in the air.
The 24-year-old athlete has been on tour for 18 months in his new full-time role as inspirational speaker. With his program — The Why Factor — Smith has visited 192 schools in Canada and the United States.
In his young life Smith has met the Queen, lunched with Nelson Mandela, represented Canada at the Para Olympics, wheeled into a stadium bearing Ontario’s flag at the Winter Games, played basketball around the world, been invited to the sets of Hollywood movies and taught the aforementioned Drake how to play wheelchair basketball for his role on
Degrassi:@The@next@Generation.
“It doesn’t matter what you don’t have, it’s about using the abilities that you do,” Smith explained before his presenta- tion. “My favourite message, out of all of them, is telling the students that there is no limit.”
In his 60-minute presentation, Smith spends more time interacting with his audience than speaking to it.
“I don’t want to bore the kids. I want to keep their attention in this presentation for 60 minutes. How do you do that? You get them involved,” he said.
In one activity, Smith asks two students to stand up and tell him what they want to be when they grow up. “A cook,” one replies. “An environmentalist,” the other says.
“I don’t care,” Smith responds. “Now tell me what you are going to be.”
“A cook,” the student bellows, with more confidence.
“An environmentalist,” the other follows with added gusto.
That’s Smith’s favourite exercise, he says.
“Who cares what we want? I want to marry Selena Gomez, that’s my want,” he said. “I want them to tell me what they are going to be and that one word changes their whole perspective.”
It’s that philosophy that inspired a young boy in wheelchair to pursue his love for basketball. Smith told the students it took him four years of practice before he sank his first basket. His career with the provincial and national teams eventually took him around the world. Despite being retired, Smith will return to the sport next month, having been invited to play for Team USA at the Maccabiah Games in Israel.
“I saw (NBA player) Allen Iverson dribbling a basketball and there’s nothing like it. I just wanted to be like AI. I started playing ball and I fell absolutely in love with the sport,” Smith recounted. “I was very fortunate. From a young age my mom instilled in me that I’m just like everybody else. I just look a little different.”