Near the end of last year, Kevin Pearce was one of the best snowboarders in the world. He had visions of winning more halfpipe contests, making the United States Olympic team and returning home to Vermont, perhaps with a medal.
Now he is on the verge of what feels like a greater victory: simply making it home.
Pearce sustained a traumatic brain injury during a halfpipe practice on Dec. 31. He was airlifted to a Utah hospital, took days to regain consciousness and watched February’s Winter Olympics on television from a brain rehabilitation center in Colorado. Far from the spotlight, Pearce continues daily therapy to retrain his muscles and his mind.
“Everything has been getting better,” said Pearce’s father, Simon. “It’s been across the board.”
Pearce’s progress has been so steady that he is expected to return home to Norwich, Vt., in the next few weeks, his parents said. They expect him to be driving by year’s end. And Pearce’s doctor believes Pearce will snowboard again.
“I don’t know that he’ll be doing halfpipes, because we don’t want him to hit his head,” said Dr. Alan Weintraub, medical director of the brain injury program at Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colo. “But he’s going to snowboard. I can pretty much guarantee it.”
Pearce, 22, was one of the few riders to beat Shaun White the past couple of years. But while practicing a spinning double back flip called the double cork, which became a must-do stunt, Pearce fell and struck his head in the halfpipe at Park City, Utah. He was wearing a helmet.
The short-term threat to his life came from the blood that filled the ventricles of his brain. The long-term struggle stems from a “very deep diffuse axonal injury,” Weintraub said, or the damage in what he called the “deep wires of the brain.”
While Pearce was forced to relearn such tasks as walking and talking, White won the halfpipe gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics. The American Scotty Lago earned a surprising bronze medal and dedicated it to Pearce, one of his best friends.
Pearce and his family, meanwhile, have been focused on small, private victories, buoyed by the support of the close-knit snowboarding community and tens of thousands of fans on a Facebook page established to give occasional progress reports and receive get-well wishes.
“All the support — it feels like this groundswell of energy — has really helped Kevin move forward in a remarkable way,” said Pia Pearce, Kevin’s mother. “I have nothing but gratitude for all the people in our lives, the people we know and the people we don’t know, that have been pulling for us this whole time.”
The latest milestone came Wednesday, when Pearce checked out of Craig Hospital and spent his first night outside of a hospital since the accident, at a home that his family has used as a base in the Denver area. He continues intensive treatment as an outpatient.
Pearce mostly used a wheelchair when he arrived at Craig Hospital in early February. He learned to walk with assistance, then wore a gait belt that allowed others to grab him when he lost his balance. He had 24-hour supervision in his room to prevent him from getting up, falling and striking his head again.
Now, Pearce walks independently with a barely noticeable hitch.
“If you saw him walking and you remember his walk before the accident, you’d say it’s stiffer and more lilted,” Simon Pearce said.
“Not as relaxed,” Pia Pearce added.
One of the issues therapists remain focused on is Pearce’s once-uncanny sense of balance, which has been altered because Pearce’s eyes remain slightly out of sync. He wears glasses with a sort of prism in one lens to help the eyes track. This week, a custom-made pair arrived from Oakley, one of Pearce’s sponsors.
“Of course, your balance is affected by your vision,” Simon Pearce said. “Before, if he looked sideways as he was walking, he would lose his balance. That doesn’t happen anymore. It’s all improving, but I’d say that the vision is a big part of the balance thing.”
Pearce uses balance boards, shaped like a skateboard.
“It’s absolutely the coolest thing to see him be able to get on that,” Pia Pearce said. “He does it as if he’s been on it his whole life.”
Simon Pearce said, “The brain memory is all still there from it.”
But Pearce’s memory remains a bit scattered, his parents said. Sometimes he can recite his daily schedule. Other times he does not recall a recent discussion.
“His memory is all over the place,” Simon Pearce said. “Some of it is absolutely perfect. A lot of his long-term memory is absolutely perfect. And his short-term memory was completely gone after the accident. And it is getting better. I find it erratic.”
Yet Pearce never lost the memory of his quest for the Olympics.
“His vision wasn’t nearly as good then as it is now, so it wasn’t easy to watch visually,” Pia Pearce said. “And I think emotionally he was bummed out that he wasn’t there. But he was excited for his friends, and proud of how well everyone was doing.”
The Pearces each called the Olympics a “mixed experience.”
“It was a bit hard for me knowing that — what he was feeling and how much he had wanted to be there,” Simon Pearce said.
Now Kevin Pearce approaches a different type of accomplishment, one that makes his family prouder. He is about to make it home.
