Vets Helping Vets

When the men and women who served our country are in need, who do they turn to for a helping hand? The same people they relied on back on the battlefield.

These Warriors Don’t Like Losing Either

By Mark Oprea

FROM NARRATIVELY.COM

ALL ATHLETES WANT TO inspire, be it with a game-winning homer, a diving catch, or a no-hitter. The 33 men and two women who play on the Warriors softball team are no different. They just have less to work with.

The Warriors—whose full name is the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team—are a traveling collective of veterans from around the country. They all have different wounds—missing legs, arms, eyes— but they share a mission: shattering preconceptions, in themselves as well as in the crowd. “All of us were injured,” says Cody Rice, a 33-year-old outfielder and former airborne infantry squad leader who lost his right leg to a mine in Afghanistan. “We didn’t think we’d be able to do normal things again. But you get on the team and you realize that there’s nothing holding you back except yourself.”

The only thing holding the team back on this weekend in July 2017 is a nasty losing streak. The Warriors play about 80 games a year, all against able-bodied teams, and they just lost all four at a tournament in Minnesota. They’re looking to get back on track as they walk into Canal Park in Akron, Ohio, to play against a team of local celebrities led by the city’s mayor.

The Warriors have a lust for life on and off the field. Prior to game time, Rice, from Newark, Ohio, banters with teammate Josh Wege (“No leg-y Wege,” as Rice calls him) in the dugout. Seated nearby and cleaning off her batattachable prosthetic arm is Danielle Green from South Bend, Indiana. “All this is very, very therapeutic,” she says. “It’s all about, ‘Let’s see what I can do, how high I can take it.’”