STANWOOD – It’s a sun-splashed spring day, the kind that gives a person hope that summer is finally around the corner.
Two brothers are hanging out near the track at Stanwood High School. Little brother is there to run. He’s a mid- to long-distance competitor. He waits, quietly and patiently, for his first event to start.
Big brother is there to watch.
He’s an athlete, too, but today he’s a fan.
Someone asks little brother how he thinks he’ll do. Does he have a chance to win? Before he can respond, big brother interjects: “He could win. … But he’s lazy.”
Maybe it’s just an older brother giving his clearly shy sibling a hard time. Or maybe it’s a way of motivating his younger brother.
Then again, maybe there’s more to it.
The older brother knows how it feels to run, to feel free and invigorated, to become clear-headed and locked into an addictive, propulsive groove.
Like so many other runners, big brother got hooked on that feeling. But this past fall, a near-fatal fluke accident stole that feeling – at least in the form he once knew.
Now in a wheelchair, he’s slowly learning to experience the rush of competition in a different form.
In that light, maybe big brother’s comment is more warning than joke: Don’t ever take your ability to run for granted.
‘I have to be able to do something’
Sports such as baseball never appealed much to Matt Howard. He gave America’s pastime a try several years ago, but trudging around the outfield and waiting for something to happen wasn’t his idea of fun.
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Photo Gallery“I can’t stand around and do nothing. I have to be able to do something,” said Matt, a sophomore at Stanwood High.
Matt has always been active, whether it was bird hunting, or fishing, or soccer, or cycling, or running. He embraced the latter activity in seventh grade. He showed promise, too, quickly becoming a talented, eager harrier who voluntarily worked out with the Stanwood High cross country team.
This past November, he completed his second season on the Spartans’ cross country team and earned his second varsity letter.
Partly because of Matt’s interest in running, his younger brother, Cody Howard, started running. They often trained together. Although Matt was two years older and significantly stronger, Cody, currently an eighth-grader at Stanwood Middle School, always did his best to keep up.
‘It just snapped’
The morning of Nov. 27, 2006, changed Matt’s life forever.
He and his family live in a semi-rural section of Stanwood. During Thanksgiving break, Matt and his brother were outside with their parents, Blake and Shari Howard. Thanks to unusually snowy, windy weather, their property was littered with downed limbs.
“It was more snow than …,” Shari said, pausing, “I mean, how often do we get snow like that?”
As Matt helped tidy the driveway of his grandparents, who live next door, he heard a sudden cracking sound. Weakened by the weight of the snow, a large alder gave way, sending a 30-foot section of the tree hurtling toward the ground. “It just snapped,” Matt recalled.
There was no time to flee.
The massive hunk of wood hit Matt in the upper back and slammed him to the ground. He suffered a torn aorta, which caused significant internal bleeding. The force of the blow also broke both of his legs, several ribs and, most significantly, four vertebrae.
When he woke up in the hospital, Matt learned he was paralyzed from the waist down.
Doctors said he was fortunate to be alive.
A new challenge
Matt responds to the question as if the answer is obvious.
Why did you decide to get involved in track again?
“It’s just kind of something I do,” he said. “I would have done it if I could run. I’ll do it now.”
After the accident, Matt spent 23 days in the intensive-care unit at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. He then spent a month at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle.
While at Children’s, Matt blasted through everything the physical therapists threw at him. “None of it was hard,” he said of the mobility and strength exercises.
When therapists gave Matt a week to learn a new skill, he’d master it in a day. “He took to rehab unusually well, from what people tell us,” Shari Howard said.
He decided in early April to rejoin the Stanwood track team as a wheelchair racer. With encouragement from Spartans head coach Paul Johnson, Matt set up a training and competition schedule.
He got a three-wheeled racing chair, which is much different than a regular wheelchair, from 2004 Stanwood alum Theresa Nicholas. She competed in wheelchair sports throughout high school.
Matt had a lot to learn about the racing chair, which requires athletes to simultaneously use their hands to exert force on the wheels and adjust a steering lever that sets the wheel angle during turns.
“I don’t have a choice,” Matt said of learning the new skills. “If I want to (compete), I have to do it in a chair.”
Ready for next year
Matt competed in a combined total of four junior-varsity and varsity meets this spring, each time racing alongside able-bodied athletes. He competed in the 100- and 200-meter dashes, with season-best times of 21 seconds and 1 minute, respectively.
After realizing he needed to increase his upper-body strength in order to be competitive in longer events, Matt opted to skip the last few meets of the season. He plans to focus on lifting weights and learning to better control his chair.
His aim is to compete in the district and state meets, where under a new rule that goes into effect this year, wheelchair athletes can score points for their respective teams. In previous years, efforts by athletes in wheelchairs were not counted toward team points.
Said Matt, “I hope by the time next year comes around I’ll be able to (race more) competitively.”
At times, the process was frustrating, Matt said, but he still maintained a generally upbeat attitude.
“I think he was pretty positive with it,” said his close friend Cameron Bailey.
“I would describe this year as a sort of testing-the-waters experience,” coach Johnson said, “and we hope that by next year (Matt will) be more comfortable with it.”
Some things change, others don’t
The way Matt competes is just one of many changes in his life. He’s still learning what it means to be paralyzed.
At home, his transition was aided by the installation of an automated wheelchair lift on the main stairway and a remodeled wall that makes it easier for him to get from the living room to the kitchen. An access ramp is planned for the rear of the house, and a previously unfinished basement has become his new bedroom and bachelor pad.
The renovation would have been impossible without the help of many family members, friends and generous acquaintances, Matt’s mother said.
Matt also has a new set of wheels. His parents bought a red Chevy S10 truck that’s equipped with customized hand controls and has space behind the front seat to stow his wheelchair. You push down on a lever to accelerate and push forward to brake.
As usual, Matt, who got his driver’s license just two weeks before the accident, learned quickly. “It’s not that hard (to drive). It took, like, two days to figure out,” he said.
Matt missed a considerable amount of school during his recovery but is caught up on all his assignments. Stanwood teachers and administrators have been extremely helpful and understanding, Shari Howard said.
For all the changes Matt endured, one constant is the support of his family, including Cody. They still act like typical teenage brothers. They’re much closer than Matt lets on, Shari said.
“If I need help, he helps me,” Matt said. “I make fun of him, he makes fun of me. I punch him, he punches me. It’s all the same.”
Said Cody, “He’s a good brother.”
Finding his place
Like many enthusiastic parents, Blake and Shari Howard support their children’s pursuits in sports and school.
Shari has gotten used to the ongoing whirlwind of taking kids from one event to the next. She clearly treasures her boys.
Shari said she’s proud of Matt not just for recovering from the accident, but for choosing to stay involved and pursue his passion for track. But she’s wary of singling him out.
“To me, he’s just a kid trying to rebuild his life. I don’t see him as a story,” she said.
Then she added, “I think he’s just trying to find his place, and running’s what he knew, so it’s a natural place for him to start.
“It’s where he fits in.”
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