Anyone watching the Winter Paralympics has probably taken note of Steve Emt, who — along with Laura Dwyer — is representing Team USA in the Games' first-ever mixed doubles event.
Their performance is one thing: The pair notched three dramatic, back-to-back wins in the round-robin tournament to reach the semifinals, marking the first time the U.S. has qualified for a medal round in wheelchair curling since the 2010 Paralympics.
After losing to Korea in the semifinals, Emt and Dwyer will face Latvia in the bronze medal match on Tuesday, in the hopes of winning the U.S. its first Paralympic medal in wheelchair curling.
But it's their teamwork and attitude on ice that really set them apart. Emt, in particular, has charmed the internet, with his booming baritone delivering a steady stream of encouragement to his doubles partner and demands to the granite stones they're sliding ("curl!" "sit!").
"I have three older siblings. I was always on the basketball court getting beat up by them, so I had to assert myself on the court, around the kitchen table, everything," he said when asked about his deep voice this week.
While Emt, 56, is competing in a new event, he's no stranger to the sport: The 10-time national champion and three-time Paralympian is the most decorated Paralympic curler in U.S. history.
But he didn't know what curling was until he got recruited off the street just over a decade ago.
Emt, who is 6 feet, 5 inches tall, was enjoying a day in Cape Cod, Mass., in 2013 when a stranger with slicked-back hair approached and asked if he was local. Emt replied that he lived in Connecticut and suspiciously asked why.
"He said, 'Well, I train with the Paralympic rowing team here in the Cape. I saw you pushing up the hill back there. With your build, I could make you an Olympian in a year,'" Emt recalled, referring to his wheelchair. "And I heard 'Olympics,' I'm like: Let's go. What the hell is curling?"
After their conversation, Emt drove home and did some research, confirming that curling was not related to weightlifting, as he originally suspected.
"I went back two weeks later and I threw my first stone, and it just bit me," he said.
Before long, Emt was making the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Massachusetts to spend the weekend training with that stranger-turned-coach, Tony Colacchio. He made the U.S. wheelchair curling team in 2014 and competed at his first world championship in 2015. Emt made his Paralympic debut in Pyeongchang in 2018, five years after that fateful encounter.
Emt, speaking to reporters in October, said the sport of curling has changed him as a person, mellowing him out. But the existence of the sport as a competitive outlet for athletes with disabilities changed his life.
Emt had been an all-star high school athlete, an Army West Point cadet and a UConn basketball walk-on before a drunk driving incident paralyzed him from the waist down at 25 years old.
"I'm a jock … I need to compete, and I didn't have anything going on in my life," Emt said. "Seventeen years after my crash, I had a hole, and then [Colacchio] came along and stalked me into the sport."
By that point, Emt had spent years working as a middle school math teacher, a high school basketball coach and a motivational speaker. The latter has been his full-time job for almost a decade, taking him to over 100 schools across the country each year. He tells those teenagers about the chance Colacchio took on him, encouraging them to "be a Tony."
"Go sit with that kid at lunch that's sitting alone … smile [at] somebody in a hallway, get your heads out of your phones, get your heads out of the sand," he continued. "We're all going through something … and a simple 'hello' or 'good morning,' it could change their day. It could change somebody's life."
Why Emt now shares his story
Emt wasn't always so willing to open up. For the first half a year after his 1995 crash, he told everyone a deer had run in front of his car rather than admit he had gotten behind the wheel drunk.
"I was lying to myself, I was lying to everybody around me," he said. "I didn't want kids to look at me in my hometown, in the state, and everyone around the country, as a drunk driver. I wanted them to look at me as a stud athlete and a great person."
Emt had been a "stud athlete": His talents in high school basketball, soccer and baseball made him a star in his hometown of Hebron, Conn., and earned him a spot on the basketball team at West Point.
But he dropped out two years later, after his father's sudden death from a heart attack. He went home to Connecticut and eventually enrolled at UConn, where he walked on to its storied basketball team, joining future NBA greats like Donyell Marshall. Emt says, with a chuckle, that he had 38.7 seconds of playing time in his two years.
Emt was wearing his Big East championship jacket the night of his 1995 accident, which he says left him for dead on the side of the highway. When he woke up from a coma a few days later, he learned he would never walk again.
And he didn't want to tell people why, until a newspaper reporter approached him six months later wanting to tell his story — and encouraged him to be honest. He said the opportunity to "come clean" helped him accept what he'd done and forgive himself.
"That's my label: Yeah I'm a curler, yeah I'm a speaker, yeah I'm a drunk driver," he said. "I'm in a wheelchair because of a drunk driving crash, and I want you to know it and I want you to learn from me."
Emt first got into motivational speaking about eight months after his accident, and has been doing it ever since. He calls it his therapy.
He says that and curling — which is about shaking hands with competitors instead of smack-talking them — has helped him slow down and appreciate the little things. Relocating to Wisconsin and the chiller pace of Midwest life has also helped. And he says he cherishes the platform that curling has given him.
"I want people to know: 'Hey, when you're ready to talk, I'm here for you.' This is what I do, from my speaking to my curling, whatever it is, there are so many opportunities to be successful again," he said. "When you wake up and you're told you're never going to walk again, it's like, what do I do now? … And I just want people to know that there are so many avenues out there, so many things to do."
Emt, the oldest Paralympian on Team USA, originally aimed to make it to three Games. But he's now eyeing even more, as he'd like to compete on home turf in Salt Lake City in 2034 (two Games away).
"I'm going to be like 90 years old competing at the Paralympics," he laughed.
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