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Former athlete, paralyzed from the waist down, discovers new ways to achieve and inspire

After the accident, Nick Scott was on his back in a ditch, conscious and perfectly still. Aware he hadn’t taken a breath in a while, he quickly gulped some air.

Moments before, as the car swerved and began the first of several flips, Scott had closed his eyes and loosened his grip on the steering wheel.

"I said to the Lord, ‘I’m in your hands now.’ "

A blown tire. A spinning Buick Skylark. A 16-year-old destined for a wheelchair.

"I was just laying there looking up at the sky, and I didn’t feel any pain. I was just looking at the sky.

"They asked me to move my foot. Then they asked me again.

" ‘I am,’ I told them. ‘I am.’ "

"Want to hear something funny?" Scott, now 25, said recently in his living room in Ottawa, Kan., an hour’s drive southwest of Kansas City.

He was just voted MTV online "hottie of the day," he said. A grin fills his face.

"It gives me a little more exposure," Scott said.

Scott is a wheelchair bodybuilder. He started competing two years ago, seven years after the accident that paralyzed his legs.

That, and you’re supposed to have fun along the way. Even if you’re in a wheelchair.

His latest mission is less about him and more about creating a higher profile for wheelchair bodybuilding.

He turned to the Internet. His MySpace page tallied hundreds of thousands of hits. Then he developed a Web site, wheelchair-bodybuilding.com.

For the "have fun along the way" part, he got flashy during posing competitions.

Props aren’t allowed while posing, but colorful neon tubes and wheel spinners on his chair apparently are. So is the lighted sign on the back with his nickname: Beast.

Not everybody appreciates the showmanship. They think it distracts from the true focus: physique. But Patrick Laugerude, a wheelchair bodybuilder from Colorado Springs, Colo., is a Nick Scott fan.

Especially after watching Scott at his first bodybuilding show.

"When it comes to his turn on stage," Laugerude said, "he does this ‘Saturday Night Live’ Will Ferrell disco dance, bobbing his head. It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen."

Scott wants to bring attention to competitions, and he’s happy to be Exhibit A. He wants to inspire the disabled, yes. A stronger upper body is a great asset for anybody in a wheelchair. He wants to inspire the able-bodied, too. After all, if a guy in a wheelchair can work that hard...

Scott starts his story with the accident in 1998. He was headed to football practice from the Country Kitchen restaurant where he was a part-time cook and his mother, Sylvia, the general manager.

Soon after, he was lying in a hospital bed hearing the doctor’s matter-of-fact delivery: You’re paralyzed from the waist down. Your football days are over. You won’t walk again.

The doctor left, and Sylvia held her son.

"Take one day at a time," she told him.

He broke down. He had lost everything. He was going into junior year of high school in Pomona, Kansas, where his family lived before moving to Ottawa.

Now he had titanium rods in his back and 62 staples. He went from the hospital to a rehab center in Topeka. By day, he joked with the nurses. At night, depression set in.

That month in Topeka, he learned not only to take one day at a time but to focus on one mission at a time.

First up: Get by without pain medicine.

The sooner he could get off the medication, the sooner he could go home. He had a button to administer a dose. He used it once, then went cold turkey.

How much pain was there?

"A lot. I was so determined, I didn’t care."

One day Scott got a glimpse of himself in a mirror.

"I was shocked," he said.

He had gained an enormous amount of weight. His hair was frizzy, his face hairy. He wore a backup pair of glasses.

"I was the doofiest, dorkiest, fattest kid I had ever seen," he said. "I swore to myself I would never look like that again."

Football was out, but he was on a mission to lift weights again. He got back to the bench press, and by the end of junior year pushed up 325 pounds.

He joined a gym in Ottawa and trained through the summer of 1999 so he could compete. In December that year, he bench-pressed 350 pounds at a meet at nearby Williamsburg High School, breaking the school record by 75 pounds.

Other missions followed.

He needed rehab through his junior year but wanted to keep up with his coursework to stay even with classmates and graduate on time. Then he decided he wanted to cross the stage at graduation with crutches rather than his wheelchair.

It was a crazy idea. But his physical therapist helped push his body to the limit. One day, holding on to the parallel bars, the therapist steadying him with a belt, he took a step. A weird step, more of a leg fling, but something.

His dad erected parallel bars in the backyard. Scott’s thighs got stronger, but his lower legs, ankles and feet were just along for the ride -- and always will be.

On graduation day, he used forearm crutches to walk from the door to the center of the gym, and took his seat. Everyone in town knew his story. People were crying.

His football coach helped him up the steps, and with the crutches he walked across the stage to get his diploma.

Scott also graduated to national powerlifting competitions in 2001 and 2002, vying in bench press and curls against able-bodied competitors. He collected 39 first-place finishes.

His success got him itching for a new mission. After earning a business degree from Ottawa University in 2005, he started to research bodybuilding.

Lucus Johnson -- Scott’s friend since grade school and fellow lifter -- knew Scott would explode onto the bodybuilding scene.

"We both have very driven personalities," Johnson said. "I knew whatever he pursued he would be good at, guaranteed."

The discipline of his diet, for example -- heavy on protein shakes and chicken -- amazed even Johnson.

"I can’t even get a beer in him," he said. "It’s grilled chicken and water. He always asks for extra napkins to soak up any grease."

Johnson accompanies Scott to competitions. He carries his gear, helps film videos for posting on the Web, and offers advice on tanning creams and posing music.

And he’s watched his friend succeed: Second place at the Wheelchair Nationals in Florida in March 2006. First place awards two straight years at a bodybuilding championship in Denver. In December he also was named best overall male poser.

The fun part?

In Denver, the city was putting on its Parade of Lights, Johnson said, and Scott decided they shouldn’t just watch.

So they turned on Scott’s wheelchair lights and he slipped in.

"He ripped his shirt off and he was posing in the middle of downtown Denver," Johnson said. "I was sure he would get hauled off by security. But the crowd loved it. They roared."

Source - www.kansascity.com