inMotion Magazine

January | February 2019 34 Taking Life in a New Direction by Gary J. Kunich Honor, Valor, Sacrifice Steve Doudt took a step and jumped into nothing. It was one of the last steps he would ever take with his own legs. The Air Force combat controller was on his sixth and final “High-Altitude Low-Opening” parachute jump with Army special operations troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And like the five before them, it was flawless. Then he got on his motorcycle, merged onto a highway and the car never saw him. “The car rode me into the guard rail and threw me,” Doudt says. “Never lost consciousness. I laid there for what seemed like a few minutes. Tried to sit up and get up, and realized my legs were broken really bad. The fire truck actually showed up first. They loaded me right into the fire truck to take me to the hospital.” Four months later, the doctors could do no more. “We have to cut off your legs,” they told him. “We don’t have a choice.” And that’s the day Steve Doudt stepped his life in a new direction. Doudt is a full-time official and travels the country for the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. This year marked his 18th season as a basketball official and his second at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. Doudt explains, “I do 85 to 90 games a season – the collegiate division, all the adult divisions, junior division … My wife is a basketball widow. I average every other weekend on the road.” He never hesitated when his life took that unexpected turn in July 1992. Steve Doudt is a full-time basketball official for the National Wheelchair Basketball Association.