In the fall of 2003, Josh Lewis was just 15 and beginning his freshman year at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, MD. The “Wildcats” football team was one of Maryland’s best and Josh had the chance to become the next big star.

The season started out strong and he played a lot. Then on October 30, instead of taking the quarterback down, Lewis collided, helmet-to-helmet. He doesn’t remember much of what happened next, but he was told that he was transported to Children’s National Medical Center by helicopter. When he woke up, Josh was in the ICU, attached to tubes and IV lines — unable to move his arms and legs. He knew that he had been badly injured, but he wouldn’t learn until later that he was paralyzed with a C5 spinal cord injury.

After two months at Children’s, he was transferred to the National Center for Children’s Rehabilitation (NCCR) at NRH and became one of the new program’s first patients. After his five months at NRH, he was able to move his arms—but was still paralyzed from his chest down.

By 2004, he was back in school and graduated— on time—in 2007.  Josh began taking college classes online and planning a career in business. He learned to drive through NRH’s Driver Training Program and was thinking about playing soccer with NRH BlazeSports. All his life he had a simple game plan: Don’t give up. Keep moving forward.