(SNH) — A day that will live in hockey infamy forever.

It’s the day the Humboldt Broncos hockey team in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL) had 16 members of their team die and 13 more injured, most of them seriously and for life, when their team charter bus was hit by a semi-truck that failed to stop at a four-way intersection in rural Saskatchewan.

It was a devastating tragedy that rocked the small town of Humboldt and the entire hockey world.

It’s a day that is remembered, honored and respected by the hockey community every April 6 since the tragedy six years ago.

Recently, one of the 13 survivors, 24-year-old Jacob Wassermann, who grew up in Humboldt and was left paralyzed from the waist down after the crash, is now a 2024 Olympic hopeful in the sport of Para rowing.

It is a truly remarkable comeback for Wassermann.

Wassermann was the Humboldt Broncos No.1 goaltender at the time of the bus crash. He’s always been a gifted athlete since his early days of growing up playing hockey. His disability hasn’t changed his competitiveness. Wassermann has remained focused on a life filled with sport in some way, even though it’s not exactly the way he had hoped and dreamed prior to the bus crash.

“I’ve been an athlete my whole life,” he said. “I’ve always, from the time I started sports from a very young age, wanted to be a pro athlete. I’ve always just strived to be the best I could and compete in events against the best in the world. I found rowing and kept putting in the work.”

Wassermann’s rise in the sport of Para rowing now has him on the fast track to the Paralympics in Paris this summer, something that seemed impossible a just a year ago when he first embraced the sport and started to participate in training and competitions.

His initial goal was to get into the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles, but now his rise in the sport has him with a realistic chance to make the 2024 games.

“One of my old teammates used to say, you leave your wheelchair at the dock and leave your disability at the dock. And it’s a very freeing experience to be out there,” Wassermann said. “I’m out there with the other high-performance athletes and everybody’s working hard. I just get to go out there and perform and be an athlete and do my thing.”

You have to admire and respect Wassermann’s drive, competitiveness and will to compete. He moved on after a tragedy and has dealt with it in the most positive of ways. It’s remarkable and, without question, incredibly moving, motivating and inspiring.

Wassermann has also tried Para ice hockey, adaptive water skiing and Para rowing after a chance meeting at a grocery store with a buddy of his, also in a wheelchair, who told him about the opportunity to try rowing at the Saskatoon Rowing Club.

“I didn’t have a sport at the time; I was just sort of training on my own, just kind of trying to figure out where I wanted to go in my athletic career, I just decided to go and give it a try and I sort of just stuck with it and into the boat.”

Wassermann won a silver medal at a qualifying event in Rio de Janeiro in February and in the process, he clinched a Canada spot in the men’s single event. He may now just get that shot to represent Canada on the biggest athletic stage this summer in Paris.

“Being an athlete is a huge part of my identity and I’ve been an athlete since I could walk, so the crash and being in a wheelchair didn’t change that for me,” Wassermann said.

One of Wassermann’s former Humboldt Broncos teammates, Ryan Straschnitzki, who was also paralyzed in the 2018 bus crash, is playing wheelchair basketball and is also looking to one day compete for his native Canada at the Paralympics in the future.

They are two examples of what some of the 13 survivors of the tragedy are doing since that horrific day of the bus crash. It’s incredible to see how these young men have responded to something so tragic, so devastating, so life changing. It makes you think: Maybe my day is not so bad, or my life isn’t so bad. To me, it’s the ultimate form of motivation and inspiration.

Jacob Wassermann will continue to train this spring and summer with the hope and dream of being officially named to the Canadian Paralympic team. That is likely to happen sometime in June.

Wassermann has been overwhelmed by the hundreds of messages in show of support for him in his quest to be a Paralympic athlete.

“It sounds simple but I just say ‘thank you’,” he said. “I know it’s not a lot of words that I can say for how much the country is behind me.”   

As for how he’s overcome the tragedy of April 6, 2018, Wassermann added this:  “This horrible thing happened a long time ago, but we have no other choice but to just keep moving forward, keep living life, and just make the best out of it.”

What an attitude. What an outlook after going through and overcoming a tragedy such as this.

How do you not cheer for and pull for a young man like Jacob Wassermann? I know I will be doing both.

Ben Holden is a writer for Sports News Highlights.

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