Tackling Every Challenge

On an autumn day in 1991, former professional football player Mike Utley sustained an injury that would, in many ways, change his life.

But in many ways it wouldn’t.

The same drive and determination that led him to compete that day with the Detroit Lions against the Los Angeles Rams — in a game in which his sixth and seventh vertebrae would be fractured, rendering him a quadriplegic — is still with him today in his ambition both to maintain an active lifestyle and to help fund research for spinal cord injuries.

“I strive to win at everything I do,” Utley says, and history certainly validates that claim: a scholarship to Washington State University in 1987, All American honors, starting guard his rookie year with the Lions. And since the injury, an even more remarkable journey has resulted in an astonishing degree of self-sufficiency at his daily morning routine, as well as other activities like weightlifting, handcycling, scuba diving, practicing martial arts and driving his speedboat.

“I’m able to do these things because I’ve earned it, I’ve pushed myself,” Utley says. “People don’t realize when they see me now that I didn’t start this way. I didn’t sit this way, and my lung capacity wasn’t even close to what it is now. You’ve got to earn it every single day.”

Utley’s self-sufficiency has made him the subject of numerous television shows. And recently, as the epitome of the company’s “Yes, You Can” slogan, he was the recipient of an Invacare-sponsored trip to Super Bowl XL in Detroit.

“I want a great game,” Utley said, preparing for press conferences a few days beforehand. Born and raised in South Seattle, he was pulling for the Seahawks.

He still loves the game; despite his injury, Utley says he made the decision to play and is simply dealing with the consequences of that decision.

“People always ask me if I went through a depression stage,” he says. “No, I didn’t. People ask me if I have accepted this injury. The answer is no. I deal with it on a daily basis.”

Utley approaches his injury the same way he approached, say, a charging, 350-pound defensive lineman going after former Lions quarterback Erik Kramer: he assesses the situation and then confronts it, head-on.

From the very start, he concluded that a negative outlook would only be counterproductive. So he made the decision that his attitude would remain optimistic.

“There has never been one wavering [since] that time,” Utley says. “Never has. And you know what? I will never allow it to happen. Ever. Why? Because you don’t win that way.”

He started the Mike Utley Foundation shortly after he was injured to support other people with spinal cord injuries and raise money for research.

He talks to kids at rehabilitation centers, telling them not to slouch, to sit up straight in their wheelchairs, because they will breathe better. He tells them how to put on weight and become stronger. He wants them to work up to handling their own morning routines if that’s a possibility, and wants them to understand that rehabilitation is a way of life, an attitude, an approach to everything they do.

“I want people to see the way I sit, because I’ve earned it for the last 14 and-a-half years, to be able to sit here [like] this,” Utley says. “Where am I going to be in 14 and-a-half more years? I don’t know. But I can guarantee you it’s going to be a lot bigger, stronger and faster, that’s for sure.”

As part of his own rehabilitation regimen, Utley had mountain bike tires installed on his manual wheelchair. Why? More resistance.

“It’s harder to push, and every time I grip [the tires] I’m doing therapy on my hands,” Utley says.

The foundation’s symbol is a thumbs up, taken from the inspirational gesture Utley gave the crowd on that autumn day as he was carried off the field.

“I laid there and I was being carried off,” Utley remembers, “and giving the thumbs up brought it all together, because the guys were cheering me on, the fans were cheering me on, and I wanted to make sure people knew I was going to come back.”