Meet the four Eagle Scouts competing in the 2024 Summer Paralympics

The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games start this week, and among the competitors are four Eagle Scouts.

We’ve got a discus thrower, a wheelchair rugby athlete, a long-distance runner and an archer.

Here’s a look at the 2024 Paralympic Team USA Eagle Scouts.

David Blair

Sport: Para track and field (discus throw)
Hometown: Eagle Mountain, Utah

What you need to know: Born with a clubfoot, doctors told his parents that Blair might never function normally. After a series of surgeries, he proved them wrong by becoming a world-class athlete.

Blair, who not only is an Eagle Scout but also has served as a Scoutmaster, competed in his first Paralympics in 2016. He won gold, breaking his own world record in the process. He competed again in 2020, this time finishing fourth.

Blair’s Eagle Scout service project benefitted Shriners Hospitals for Children, where doctors performed for free the multiple surgeries that allowed him to become an athlete.

“The sooner you learn that people really don’t notice or think about your disability for longer than just a couple seconds, the sooner you can free up your mind to think of more pleasant and productive things,” Blair says. “I have found in my personal experience that a ‘disability’ is almost always a matter of attitude.”

Eric Newby

Sport: Wheelchair rugby
Hometown: Nashville, Illinois

What you need to know: The night Newby graduated from high school was also the night he made the biggest mistake of his life: After having too much to drink, he got into a car driven by someone who had also had too much to drink.

As he lay trapped in the crumpled vehicle after they ran off the road and hit a concrete post, he knew from his Eagle Scout first-aid training how bad off he was. “I know my neck is broken,” he told his mom when she arrived at the scene.

Newby, now 36, is a parent himself and enjoys going on adventures, lifting weights and swimming. He’s also a top wheelchair rugby athlete, earning silver medals as part of the U.S. team in both the 2016 and 2020 Paralympic Games.

If you aren’t familiar with wheelchair rugby, now’s a good time to learn about it. It’s a fascinating, rough, full-contact sport, made famous in part by the 2005 documentary film Murderball. In fact, Newby first learned about the sport when an occupational therapy student showed him the film years ago.

(You can watch Murderball for free online, but be aware it’s rated R for language.)

Leo Merle

Sport: Para track and field (long-distance running)
Hometown: Folsom, California

What you need to know: Merle isn’t just a remarkable athlete. He recently graduated from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. He’s put his dental career on hold, however, to compete in the 2024 Paralympics.

Merle specializes in the 1,500-meter run. He won gold in that event at the 2023 Parapan American Games. Merle has cerebral palsy, a disorder that affects a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture.

“One of the things that I’ve always had a fascination with and wanted to do was expanding education about adaptive sports and physical disabilities for athletes and people in general,” Merle said in an interview with The Michigan Daily newspaper. “At the end of the day, the larger impact I want to have is to extend that invitation.”

Eric Bennett

Sport: Para archery
Hometown: Surprise, Arizona

What you need to know: Bennett was 15 years old when he lost his right arm above the elbow in a car accident. His immediate fear was that he’d never be able to participate in archery again.

Thank goodness he was wrong. Years after the accident, his father took him hunting and brought along a bow that he could use with his feet. Though that particular piece of equipment didn’t work great for Bennett, it opened his heart and mind to the idea of para archery.

Now 50, Bennett has competed in four Paralympic Games, finishing as high as fourth in the individual recurve archery event in 2012. He’s won three medals in his career in the para archery world championships.

How to watch the 2024 Paralympics

The Paralympics began in 1948 as a gathering of British World War II veterans. Nowadays, they are held in the same location as — and closely following — the Olympic Games.

Paralympic athletes have impairments in body structures and functions that lead to a competitive disadvantage in their sport. Impairments include impaired muscle power, impaired range of motion, limb deficiency, leg length difference, short stature (reduced length in the bones of the upper limbs, lower limbs and/or trunk), hypertonia (increase in muscle tension and a reduced ability of a muscle to stretch caused by damage to the central nervous system), ataxia (uncoordinated movements caused by damage to the central nervous system), athetosis (slow, involuntary movements), vision impairment and intellectual impairment.

This year’s Paralympics begin with the opening ceremony on Aug. 28.

In addition to track and field, para archery, and wheelchair rugby, athletes compete in events such as blind football, para cycling, para rowing and sitting volleyball. Select events will be airing on CNBC, USA Network and NBC, while Peacock will carry every event in its entirety.

Click here for the full Paralympics schedule.

Photos by Getty Images