http://bit.ly/rqQHuy U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Sports Program - Team Roping - 10 May 2008 - Las Cruces - New Mexico - FMWRC

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PHOTO CAPTION: Spc. Jake Lowery of Fort Richardson, Alaska, competes May 10 in a Troy Shelley Affiliate team roping at Denny Calhoun Arena in Las Cruces, N.M., as part of the Army's new Wounded Warrior Sports Program designed to give active-duty Soldiers with life-altering injuries an opportunity to compete in sporting events.

Cowboy-Soldier Launches Army's Wounded Warrior Sports Program


Photos and story by Tim Hipps, FMWRC Public Affairs (cleared for public release)

LAS CRUCES, N.M.—Purple Heart recipient Spc. Jake Lowery officially launched the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Sports Program with an inspirational team-roping performance at Denny Calhoun Arena on May 10–11.

Lowery, 26, of Fort Richardson, Alaska, lost his right eye and sustained massive head injuries when he was hit by an improvised explosive device that killed a fellow Soldier in Fallujah, Iraq, on Feb. 11, 2007.

Less than a year later, Lowery, a lifelong cowboy, was back aboard a horse and roping steers despite suffering from a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"This pretty much keeps me going—it's the only thing that does," he said. "Without it, I'd just be hanging out in my room somewhere."

The Wounded Warrior Sports Program was designed to give active-duty Soldiers with life-altering injuries an opportunity to compete in sporting events by paying for their athletic attire, registration fees, transportation, lodging and per diem.

Lowery travelled from Alaska to El Paso, Texas, and connected with family for a ride home to Silver City, N.M., where he, stepfather John Escobedo and grandfather Pete Escobedo loaded a trailer with horses and drove to Las Cruces for a weekend of roping.

All three competed in the Troy Shelley Affiliate event.

"This is one of the best things the Armed Forces could have done because it's just therapy for these guys who feel like 'I lost this. I lost that,'" said Sgt. 1st Class (ret.) Pete Escobedo, 83, who served 27 years in the Army. "If you really want to do something with yourself...Jacob is a prime example. He's really trying.

"We're thankful for the Army for doing everything it can for him."

Lowery teamed with different partners to successfully rope two of six steers in the first round of competition on Saturday. After roping two more in the second round and another in the third, he was sitting in third place entering the final short round. But when prize money came into play, his steer got away.

"It looked good to me," Lowery said of his final toss. "I'm not sure how he got out of it. I guess it happens that way sometimes, especially in this sport. Maybe I roped him a little too low. If not, I don't know."

Despite struggling with limited depth perception, Lowery is encouraged that his roping skills will continue to improve. He already bounced back to win an all-around crown in Alaska and teamed with his stepfather to capture the team-roping title at the Professional Armed Forces Rodeo Association's 2007 World Finals in Fort Worth, Texas.

"I'm not back to where I was, by any means," Lowery said. "I just keep practicing and hope it eventually comes back."
Lowery's first run of 8.43 seconds was one of the fastest of the morning among 450 cowboys in Las Cruces. He posted another quality time of 8.69.


"Yeah, it was good, but it could have been better," he said of the full day of roping. "It was awesome just to come down and get out of the cold weather for awhile. I really enjoyed it."

Pete has faith that Jake eventually will overcome TBI and PTSD. Putting him on a horse is the best therapy he knows.

"I have been roping with Jacob since he was knee high to a grasshopper," granddad said. "I just don't have words to explain the love that we have for Jacob and how much we enjoy ourselves doing what we do. He's worked very hard. I'm sorry that he had to be injured the way that he was, but we're doing the best that we can.

"He has taken his injury and forgotten it, to a degree, while he is doing what he loves the most. If you go to our house, this is all you'll find: horses and cattle. If we're not roping today, we're roping tomorrow."

On this weekend, they were roping both days—three generations of cowboys taking turns roping steers in 100-degree desert heat.

"Jake has done remarkably well in coping with his injury," Pete said. "Instead of saying: 'Well, I'm injured,' he says: 'I'm going to do what I can. The Good Lord handed me this hand, so I'm going to do with what he dealt me the best that I can.'"

John, too, is proud of how Jake has dealt with adversity, but he's also experienced the aftereffects firsthand.

"Sometimes he gets those debilitating headaches and they just knock him smooth out," John said. "And then he just doesn't feel like doing anything. And if he does feel like it, his head is hurting so bad that he's not able to.

"There's a lot of stuff in your head after you go to war and get blown up that you just can't throw away. Me, I don't have a clue because I've never been, but I can just imagine. A good friend of mine was a Navy SEAL in Vietnam and he got blown up big-time, and the guy's got the best attitude of anybody I ever met.

"Jake wasn't hit for ten minutes and he was on the phone asking: 'What can I do?'" John said. "We got him cycled through (the recovery process) and once he started getting right, he called me up and said: 'It's not the events in your life that matter; it's what you do with those events. If you want to lie around and be a crybaby, be a crybaby. If you want to jump up and do something...'"
That call made John proud.

"I told him before he left: 'When you sign (enlistment papers with the Army), I can't come and get you.' And he said: 'I ain't worried.' He's never regretted his decision to go, not at all. He's never got on the 'Poor me, I wish I hadn't' and stuff like that. We hand him a lot and don't give him the opportunity to lie around and have his own personal pity party. It's like: 'Hey, get up, let's go do something.'"
Then another curious moment comes along.

"At to the world finals last year, he was sitting up at the top of the coliseum by himself," John recalled. "He just couldn't stand the confinement of having people all around him. It's just the little things, like he'll forget to shut the gate (after riding the horse through)."

The affects also can be seen in Jake's prolonged moments of silence.

"If we can ever get him to where he'll just start talking again and intermingling with people and not being paranoid, I think life will be good," John said. "When he's on horseback or working out, he's a normal guy. But we'll be sitting at the house watching TV or something and it ain't the same guy. We drove six- or seven-hundred miles to the world finals—14 hours of drive time—and he probably said three words.

"But you stick him on a horse or in the gym, where his comfort zone is, and he's fine."

At age 83, Pete derives inspiration from his injured grandson.
"His motivation is the love for this sport, and that keeps him wanting to get better instead of finding excuses as to why he can't do something," he said. "He's finding ways and reasons to do whatever he can. We really don't worry too much about him, especially when we see how he's progressing and conducting himself with his injury. He's just not letting it get him down."

Jake believes that sets him apart from some of his fellow injured troops, whom he says "don't seem to want to do anything." He couldn't wait to get active again.

"Some of the Morale, Welfare and Recreation people told me about it when I was at the Warrior Transition Unit," Lowery said of the Wounded Warrior Sports Program. "About two days later, I sent in the paperwork. I sent them about four or five events they could pick from."

"This was the perfect venue for this particular guy," said Army sports specialist Mark Dunivan, who expects more applicants to follow. "I have been contacted by an amputee who wants to run in the USA Triathlon Physically Challenged National Championships in New York in July. I think it's just a matter of getting the word out a little bit more."

Instructions for the application process to participate in the Wounded Warrior Sports Program are available at http://bit.ly/o4nDFE.. For more details, contact Dunivan at mark.dunivan@us.army.mil or 719-526-3908 or Peggy Hutchinson at peggy.hutchinson@us.army.mil or 703-681-7211.


To learn more about the Wounded Warrior Program, visit the U.S. Army online at: http://bit.ly/o4nDFE

"It was a belter," Peter Moores says with a knowing smile as, in the autumn sunshine, he remembers the celebration last Thursday night after Lancashire won their first outright county cricket championship since 1934. Seventy-seven years is a long time to wait for any sporting hoodoo to end but Lancashire's thrilling victory over Somerset, which allowed them to overtake Warwickshire in the final hour of the season, was especially meaningful for their coach from Macclesfield.
Apart from leading a largely anonymous team of mostly locally born young Lancastrians to an historic title, Moores's most satisfying achievement in cricket follows his painful demise as England coach in January 2009.
In the 32 months since Kevin Pietersen engineered Moores's downfall, England have risen to world No1 in Test cricket. But Moores found a form of personal redemption which demanded riotous acknowledgement in Taunton.
"We had a couple of hours in the dressing room afterwards," Moores says, "and that's often the best time. But we stayed tight as a team and went together to a bar next door and told stories all night long. Dave Roberts, who used to be our physio, suddenly arrived from nowhere. He'd been fishing in Scotland but decided to come all the way down to Taunton to join the party. It was a pretty good effort and summed up the spirit in my team."
Amid the drinking, and the delirious happiness, there was time for reflection. Moores could have lost self-belief in the calamitous days after England fired him but he was saved from any lasting crisis by an early invitation to apply for the position as Lancashire's coach. "I still believed in what I'd tried to do with England but [his axing] really came as a shock. It happened very quickly. And that's why the Lancashire job was so good for me. It didn't allow me to sit back and lick my wounds or become bitter. Within a week I'd got the call from them and I had to make a decision pretty much there and then. When I went for the first interview I wasn't even sure I wanted the job. But by the time I'd walked out of the interview I was desperate to get it.
"On my first day in the job the first person I saw was the car park attendant. He said 'You're Peter Moores aren't you? Well, good luck in your new job. Our side looks good on paper, don't it?' I agreed: 'Yeah, we look all right.' He then said [as Moores slips into his broadest Lancastrian accent]: 'Yeah, we're good on paper and crap on grass.' I thought: 'Welcome back to the north-west.'"
Dismissed before this season began, and compared unflatteringly with neighbouring Yorkshire, who were tipped as likely champions, Lancashire shocked everyone. Yorkshire, who were relegated, are still said to have a more talented squad. Is that insulting to Lancashire – or simply testament to Moores's ability to squeeze the most out of his unheralded players?
"You can never measure these things accurately," he says. "But Yorkshire certainly have more recognised names than us. You go through our top seven: Paul Horton, Stephen Moore, Karl Brown, Luke Proctor, Steven Croft, Tom Smith and Gareth Cross – and people will say we've hardly heard of any of them. But that won't mean you won't hear of them in the future.
"We tried to prepare them like an international side. But we didn't really know if they could replicate it in match situations. Karl Brown had hardly played any first-class cricket before this season – same with Luke Proctor. Simon Kerrigan [their match-winning 21-year-old spinner] had only played a little. So they were unknown quantities – both to the opposition and ourselves."
On the final morning of the season it seemed likely Warwickshire would win the title by defeating Hampshire – who were already relegated and reeling in their second innings. But Neil McKenzie, who made Moores suffer as England coach when he and Graeme Smith once batted all day at Lord's for South Africa, provided epic resistance for Hampshire. "We knew Neil could do it," Moores says. "I looked at my phone after an hour and Hampshire hadn't lost a wicket. I thought, 'Don't tempt fate. Don't look at your phone or a telly again.' All the superstitions came out.
"We also had this tortuous time where we didn't know where the next Somerset wicket was coming from. They went from 130 for seven to 311 for nine and we were just praying something would happen. We finally got the last wicket – a direct hit and a run-out. But the fact Somerset didn't roll over made it all the sweeter.
"Me and Glen Chapple [his 37 year-old captain] had to be at our best after the first day. Somerset were 314 for five and a game we had to win seemed to have slipped away. That was the big challenge to our belief. But we sat them down in the circle and said: 'Listen if we can bowl them out for under 400 we can still do something.' It went perfectly to plan after that and we won at a canter in the end. There was huge satisfaction because we had such hunger to win. We didn't perhaps expect it this season because we had such youngsters. But now, with so many players between 21 and 25, we can win much more together."
Moores might be intent on creating a legacy for Lancashire but he can also claim to have played some part in England's remarkable rise. Asked where he contributed most during his difficult 20 months in charge of the national team he pinpoints three areas – player selection, appointing various support coaches and, most tellingly, in restructuring the national academy at Loughborough. "I took over from Rodney Marsh at the Academy [in 2005] and as soon as I got there I sensed something was wrong. It was geared towards about 18 or so 23-year-olds. What it really needed to be was a performance centre that could support everything to do with England cricket. I had a big role to play in turning that academy into a performance centre and it was hard to do.
"It took a lot of convincing because people are always resistant to change. But to see it operating under David Parsons now makes me feel vindicated. He's a fantastic operator. It was my job to put those building blocks in place and to bring in the right support coaches. I appointed Andy Flower as batting coach, Richard Halsall as fielding coach and Mushtaq Ahmed as spinners' coach. Mushie comes from the sub-continent and he looks at cricket as an art – rather than a science. That offers real balance to an England set-up being managed so well by Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss."
Flower, as Moores's replacement, has been a revelation. However, the current England head coach often argues that Moores instigated so many of the most positive changes Flower has developed further. Moores gave international debuts to some key England performers over the last two years – Jonathan Trott, Stuart Broad, Matt Prior and Graeme Swann.
He also jettisoned Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison during a difficult tour of New Zealand. "It was a big call to leave out two great cricketers but I thought it had to be done. We placed our faith in Jimmy Anderson. That turned out to be a really important moment for England. Jimmy had been out for a few years but we had belief in him – so he came in and Stuart Broad also played his first Test. Jimmy got five wickets and showed he could lead the attack. He could swing it at pace while Stuart was hugely impressive. He had great belief but a real hunger to learn."
Pietersen still believes England owe him much for removing Moores and insists that their exalted position would never have been reached under their former coach. "People make statements that are non-provable," Moores shrugs. "Of course I think about the England job and wonder what might have been. But I've moved on. It's just someone's opinion and I know I did things with the best interests of England at heart.
"There are things I would do differently if I had another chance – but there's more I would do the same. There are always little moments where you think I could have handled that better. But you can do that every day of your life. I wouldn't change the general concept I brought to England. We were trying to move English cricket to a different place. Yes, they were already highly professional but we wanted to build something that was going to last. England are now in a position to do that."
Did he fail to gain Pietersen's respect because Moores himself had never been an international cricketer? "Possibly. You'd have to ask him. As a coach you need to build a relationship with a captain and that takes time. It's like a marriage. You're going to go through tough moments together and you're going to fall out at times. I've worked with different captains and it always takes time. For me the big frustration is that I didn't get that time. You also need mutual respect because the way I coach is to try and be as open as you possibly can. I know there is always more than one answer."
Does Moores believe England would have become world No1 had he remained in charge? "I don't know. We had visions of doing something like this but, as in life, you don't know how things will pan out in sport. In my time at England there were some really tight games where things didn't quite fall our way. But at Lancashire this season lots of tight games have gone our way. I've been in cricket long enough now to know you need commitment and will – but you also need the breaks. I don't think I got those breaks with England. This season, with Lancashire, I did. And of course it feels good to win. It feels great."