Despite a serious injury in his late teens that took away his ability to walk, Chris Stoutenburg persevered and adapted.
Village Media spoke with Stoutenburg, 46, events co-ordinator with the Town of Collingwood, retired Paralympian and co-owner of CrossFit Indestri.
Q: Where did you grow up?
Collingwood, born and raised.
Q: What schools did you attend?
A: Admiral Collingwood and then Collingwood Collegiate Institute. I played basketball for the Collingwood Trailblazers, all the way through high school. I played all sports, like track and field, football, golf.
Q: After you graduated from CCI, what happened then?
A: I went to the University of Guelph to play football. It was a decision between Western and Guelph; both offered me to play for the football team.
I ended up choosing Guelph, for geography.
I broke my back during our freshman camp.
Q: What happened?
A: I was at a friend’s who was renting a chalet in Blue Mountain. We were out on the balcony and I guess the balcony had been rotting. I leaned up against the railing on the far side and the whole back side of the balcony collapsed.
I fell. It was two storeys.
In the position I hit the ground in, I broke my back.
Q: What happened after that?
A: They flew me into Sunnybrook in Toronto.
I don't remember any of this, but had a surgery where they put rods in my back to stabilize the parts of the spinal cord that we're still in intact.
The surgeon comes in and he tells me what's happening. My spinal cord left me in a position where I won't walk again.
Once they moved me out of critical, I got myself a wheelchair from the hospital and started trying to use that. Most people, I guess, are hard to convince to even get up and move around.
So they fast-tracked me into the spinal cord rehab facility, next door, called Lyndhurst. It's one of the top spinal cord rehab facilities in Canada.
They said it was a six-month process. This happened in June, and my first semester of university was in September.
My goal was to still attend.
I worked really hard while I was there. They were trying to manage my expectations, but I had the goal.
In the second last week of August, they said I could go if I wanted to.
I came home for a week and then went to university.
Q: What was it like to start school at that point?
A: I did my first year in the dorm and then in my second year, I lived in an apartment downtown.
I started playing wheelchair basketball with another guy that was on the first-year floor with me from Burlington. He played for a team in Burlington.
We would drive Wednesday nights to Burlington and I learned how to play the game. I knew the game of basketball, but learning the game of wheelchair basketball was more learning – how to manoeuvre the wheelchair at high speeds and the energy of basketball without jumping.
It was a big transition for me.
That year in the playoffs, I was noticed by the Team Ontario junior coach and he invited me to try out for the Ontario junior team.
I made the team.
I think we had like four months before Canada Games.
Q: Can you talk about the emotions that you went through, going from being so physically active and fit to being in a situation where you can't be as active?
A: I didn’t take that approach.
I just figured out how to do what I wanted to do in a wheelchair. I used a hand-driven bike.
I still played football with my friends. I'd play quarterback where I would sit and throw and move around. I can move my wheelchair pretty well.
I didn't really take the approach of not being able to be physical and athletic. I just learned to do it a different way.
Q: Where did your sporting career take you?
A: With the Canada Games, I worked my way into the starting line up and we won the gold medal.
I was invited with the Ontario senior team to play at the Canadian nationals, where we won gold as well.
That next step of going from a junior to a senior team was eye-opening. The game was a lot more physical.
From that, the Canadian team coach was there scouting for the Paralympic team. This was in 1999. I got a spot on the national team for the 2000 Paralympic Games, which were in Australia. I was a bench player at that point in time.
I had only been in a wheelchair for just over a year at that time. It's kind of unheard of to make it that far, that quickly.
From that, I actually got an offer to play for the University of Illinois division one. I went from playing a couple of times a week, to playing every single day and my game just got better.
After that, I had a really successful career. I played in two world championships, and two other Paralympic Games. I won bronze in the first world championship, and I made the world all-star team.
In 2004, we won gold in the Paralympic Games and I was named again to the all-star team. We went to Amsterdam in 2006, where we won gold again and I was named MVP of the world team there.
It was cool because the Stoutenburgs are originally from the Netherlands.
I finished school at the University of Illinois.
Q: At what point did you decide to come back to Collingwood?
A: I moved to Vancouver in 2002 because there were national team members and a couple of prospects living there, and we trained all the time.
My mom actually got sick with cancer, so that's what brought me back to Collingwood.
I came home to help with her. That was in 2004.
Q: You’re one of the owners of CrossFit Indestri. How did that opportunity come up?
I played wheelchair basketball right up until the 2008 Paralympics. We finished with silver.
I had already met my wife and she'd been travelling with me.
I'd been playing highly competitively since 1999. I made the decision that I would step back and just reevaluate.
My main job now is I’m the event co-ordinator for the Town of Collingwood, since 2007. I started off as an assistant in the museum in 2005 and then worked my way up.
When I retired (from basketball) in 2008, I was so used to training five or six days a week. I still needed something to do.
I met Scott Thornton who is an ex-NHL player. He had opened CrossFit Indestri, and he was running it out of a small garage over on Stewart Road.
He said he didn’t think anybody in a wheelchair had ever done CrossFit. He said he would work with me to adapt movements, so I went and checked it out.
I fell in love with it.
I kept training with him and training in class and started coaching for him.
Eventually, it got bigger than he planned. We moved to a larger facility on Mountain Road by Side Launch Brewing Company, where we are now.
He sold me his shares in the company. My partners now, Jenn Nichol and Steph McKean, help run day-to-day operations. I run the 6 and 7 a.m. classes in the mornings.
Q: What are your hobbies?
A: I have two boys who are seven and 11 years old. They are my hobbies. They are both rep basketball players, so we spend a lot of time on the road.
I play different sports with my wife and my kids. We have a pool, so we do a lot of swimming in the summer.
I work a lot of hours in a day.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like people in Collingwood to know about you?
A: When starting to play (basketball), or starting with CrossFit, there weren't many people with disabilities [involved].
I saw a path forward that this might be a great way to help people with disabilities get involved where you don’t need a specific sport skill, just that you want to get healthier or fit.
I built a program called WheelWOD in 2013. “WOD” means workout of the day.
It’s an online program reaching out through social media to connect with other people around the world.
Now, we run world-wide competitions and we actually work for CrossFit running the Adaptive CrossFit Games.
I think at the beginning, we had like 15 people from Canada and the U.S. Now, there’s more than 1,000 people trying to qualify for the games from 26 countries.
Our social media is pretty large now, for 25,000 or more. We have 20 staff now.
That's really been my passion since I got into CrossFit – just raising that awareness and helping people who may think they don't have any kind of option. They don't fit well into a regular gym atmosphere.
We offer a program to help.
If you’re a gym owner and you’re not sure how to integrate someone with a disability into your gym, we help with adapting programming.
My business partner Kevin Ogar runs most of the day-to-day. With my full-time job, I can’t be everywhere all at once.
I’ve been really lucky to have people like Jenn, Steph and Kevin to help me through my visions that I wanted to pursue but would never have been able to do on my own.
