Journey to the Paralympics

Skandia native perseveres through amputation, stroke to reach her goal

By Linda Remsburg

Casey De Vooght was raised in Skandia, an area with plenty of snow and opportunities to play in it. Yet she never skied until a serious injury as a young adult changed her life and set her on a course to the 2026 Paralympic Games to compete in Nordic skiing and biathlon.

Obstacles along the way have not deterred her from a goal she set one day in a VA medical center in 2021 while recovering from having her right leg amputated.

“I was lying in a hospital bed, looking online, and I found a picture of a sit-skier in biathlon. It caught my eye, and that’s when it happened,” De Vooght, 27, of Negaunee said. “I saw that and texted a friend, ‘That’s what I want to do. We’re doing it.’ That’s when it all started.”

The skier in the picture was Oksana Masters, a multi-sport athlete who has earned 17 medals in the last six Paralympic Games. The games are an international sports competition, com- parable to the Olympics, for people with disabilities. They are held every four years, shortly after the Olympics in the same city.

De Vooght played sports growing up, but her life was on a much different trajectory prior to that day in the hospital. She competed in basketball and track and field at Gwinn High School. After graduation, she spent a few years there as an assistant coach for both sports. She also enjoyed hunting and excelled at competitive shooting. But skiing?

“I never skied growing up,” she said. “Never once touched cross country skis or a ski pole ever in my life until after the amputation. Once I started skiing, I fell in love with it.”

De Vooght graduated from Northern Michigan University in 2017 with a degree in community health education and nutrition and promptly enlisted in the U.S. Air Force.

“I’ve always been that person to give back,” she said. “Once I grad- uated, there was no better way to go than joining the service. It’s the ultimate giveback to the community and country.”

She enlisted and began what she expected to be a 20-year career in Security Forces.

“Law enforcement is one of those spots where you can have the biggest impacts,” she said. “I planned to go enlisted for a few years and then commission over to an officer.”

Then, during a routine military training in 2018, her leg was seriously injured.

“It was one of those fluke accidents that shouldn’t happen, but it did,” she said.

The accident caused severe damage to the blood vessels in her leg. She continued active duty on crutches for two painful years. In summer 2020, her doctors discussed the possibility of amputation. They said there was approximately 1% chance of saving the leg. She decided to take those odds and resolved to save it. She was medically discharged from the military that fall.

“I reached out to a good friend in Marquette that is a physical therapist I saw before joining the Air Force. She loves challenges. We put our heads together, and she was willing to give it a shot to see if we could save it,” De Vooght said. “When she agreed, I moved back to work with her.

“When I started seeing her, I had no movement of my knee at all. We pushed through to January, and we realized we just weren’t making progress. It was getting worse instead of better. By April 2021, I went into sepsis,” she said.

At that point, she saw a specialist at the University of Michigan and was transferred to the VA Medical Center in Ann Arbor where she had an abovethe-knee amputation. From then on, she focused on her recovery and the road to the Paralympics.

“I’m a very determined person,” she said. “I’ve always been that way — ever since I was a kid. When I set my mind to something, I’m going to try to find a way to achieve it.”

She healed quickly, and that summer joined the Team USA Nordic Ski and Biathlon Paralympic Development Team. She began a rigorous training regimen.

“The training gives you something to focus on,” she said. “It’s a way through the recovery. Trying to ski with a prosthetic has its own challenges. For me, that was also determination to do it.”

De Vooght has several prostheses. She has a microprocessor-controlled knee for walking and everyday use. She has another prosthesis for running. She uses a waterproof mechanical knee at the beach. For skiing, she uses a Moto Knee and Versa Foot made by the Biodapt company.

“I love the Versa Foot Moto,” she said. “I put that on, and I don’t even notice I have a prosthetic on. I have it set up for my skis, and I get on my skis, and it fits. It’s like another part of my body.”

De Vooght skis standing up, unlike Masters who seated on a chair attached to skis.

She does most of her training at Blueberry Ridge and Forestville ski trails near Marquette. She works with her coaches virtually. The first year on the team, she took in training camps around the country. But she has yet to compete.

“I haven’t really competed yet because of the injury and other medical things that keep popping up,” she said.

Most notable of those “other medical things” was a rare cervical spine stroke last September that left De Vooght without function of her left arm below the elbow. It also caused some cognitive deficit. She spent most of October and November at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center relearning to use her hand and arm and building back her cognitive processing time.

While the cause of the stroke remains uncertain — her doctors don’t know whether it’s related to the inju- ry of her leg — there’s no denying its impact.

“The stroke is limiting my training, for sure,” she said. “I can’t travel for competitions like I’d planned on.”

Even with this latest health challenge, De Vooght perseveres toward her goal of competing in the Paralympics. She’s back to training locally six-to-eight hours a day, six days a week — with speech therapy and physical therapy on her arm and hand added into the mix.

A typical day for De Vooght begins at 4:30 a.m. with either strength or endurance training. An endurance day might include skiing, stretching and sitting in an ice bath followed by physical or speech therapy. In the afternoon she has another training session. She also meditates.

“I focus a lot on meditation. I take