A Story of Integrity, Passion, Support and Many Other Aspirations
During the summer of 2020, Tokyo will play host to the XXXII Olympiad. Athletes from across the world will gather in the Japanese capital to compete for medals and for the chance to bring attention and honor to their home countries. While the games taking place between July 24 and August 9 are sure to capture the world’s attention, it’s the games taking place between August 25 and September 6 that have piqued our interest.
The Paralympic Games take place every four years around the same time as the summer and winter games. James Gumbert is the coach of the USA Wheelchair Rugby team. He also happens to be a regular customer of ours, and he and his team are working hard to earn their spot at the games in Tokyo. Their chances look good, but there are a few obstacles in their way before they can punch their tickets. Luckily, overcoming obstacles is exactly what these athletes excel at.
Heading to the Biggest Stage Imaginable
The road to Tokyo is long and started a while back for the USA Wheelchair Rugby team, but the next step in the journey takes them to Lima, Peru for a spot in the 2019 Parapan American Games. The USA team has a storied history of getting onto the podium in every major tournament they participate in, making them an early favorite, but that doesn’t alleviate any pressure. “[The Parapan Am] will be our qualifier for Tokyo 2020. We win this, we go to Tokyo. We don’t, and we have to go to a qualifying tournament sometime in the next six months,” Gumbert explained.
The way the games and qualifying is setup is pretty straight forward: “There are several qualifiers for each zone and there’s three zones in the world. There’s the European zone, the American zone and the Oceania zone. Each zone is allocated a certain amount of invites. And for our zone, this time, it’s going to be only one,” Gumbert said. That means that each of the International Wheelchair Rugby teams from North, South and Central America competing at this level are all vying for that one spot.
While the USA team has their work cut out for them in Lima, the journey to the Olympics is as much about the people they’ll meet and the experiences they’ll have along the way as it is about the destination. And that’s where the challenge coins come into the picture.
Honoring the People Helping You Go for Gold
Gumbert came from a military family, but interestingly enough, his experience with challenge coins didn’t originate from seeing the coins his father or brothers earned during their service. He got the idea for challenge coins during his participation in the Invictus Games.
Started by Prince Harry, the Invictus Games are an international adaptive sports event specifically for wounded, injured or sick armed services personnel and veterans. For the second iteration of the Invictus Games, Gumbert was offered the chance to coach the U.S. team, and he quickly accepted.
For Gumbert, being at those games and heading back into a military world as a civilian was a warm and welcoming experience. “When I went there, I was just surrounded by some of the most incredible heroes you can imagine,” Gumbert explained. Growing up as a military kid, it was a kind of homecoming for him, but the real moment came during one of the dinners everyone attended.
A commander made his rounds, shaking hands and getting to know some of the people at the games. When he got to Gumbert, he shook his hand and passed him a challenge coin. Thinking the commander had made a mistake, Gumbert tried to draw his attention back to the coin. “He said, ‘No, that’s yours, son.’ And I looked at it and he said, ‘If you have any problems with anyone, hand them this, and tell them I’ve got your back.’” As it turns out, the commander in question was the Assistant Secretary of Defense. From that moment, Gumbert knew the power of challenge coins.
Gumbert has had coins created for his team every year, and he doesn’t just stop at getting coins for his athletes and staff either. He’s designed two different types of coins with us, both featuring the team logo, but one has a U.S. flag on one side and the other has the name and information about the big event for the year. Because USWR isn’t simply sitting idle during the years without Paralympic competition, they’re in a position to get coins made not only for the big games, or just for the Parapan American qualifying games either, but also for world championships and other major tournaments.
Gumbert explained their challenge coin program in very direct terms, “The event coin, that goes only to the athletes that are going. And the USA coin will go to people that help us or that we recognize along the way.” Anyone who goes above and beyond in working with or helping the team, gets one of the USA coins. But more than that, Gumbert has also made it a habit to keep a collection of coins on him at all times so that whenever the possibility arises, he can show his gratitude with a coin. Or, at the very least, he can always be ready to coin the most important or famous person in the room. His biggest get thus far was the time he was able to coin Prince Harry himself.
I got asked to coach the Invictus games again in Toronto. And we were playing [Great Britain]. So the game’s over and I’m sitting there and a guy walks over and stands next to me, and it’s Prince Harry! And he’s just standing there, so I said, "Man, I hope I have a coin." I reach down into my little pouch, and I had a coin.
So we’re just standing there like two dudes, and I said, "Hey, I just wanted to say thank you for doing all this for all these guys." And he looked at me and he goes, "You’re the coach of the Yanks, aren’t you?" And I said, "Yeah, I am." … And I told him, "They need this. They’re able to get some of their life back because of this. And on behalf of Team USA, I wanted to say thank you," and I coined him.
Bigger Than a Game
In a practical sense, what Coach Gumbert and the rest of Team USA are attempting to do is win a gold medal at the 2020 Paralympic Games. But in talking to him, it’s easy to see that they’re actually accomplishing so much more than that.
Gumbert is the first person to point out that, as an adaptive sport, all of the athletes are there because something went wrong somewhere along the way. As such, he has a certain responsibility that coaches in other sports might not have. “Part of our mission is not just competing at the highest level and winning at the highest level, but helping to change some lives and attitudes along the way … Winning is important, it’s extremely important, but the other part of it is, given how our sport has grown and changed lives, if I do my job now, with the kind of athletes that we have now, people see the chair as a way to play the sport, not that somebody is confined to it. And that’s huge! I mean if you were to come and watch our sport and go ‘Man, I want to do that!’ then I’ve done my job.
The Wheelchair Rugby Parapan American Games begin August 23, 2019 and will run through September 1. All of us here at Signature Coins are wishing Coach Gumbert and Team USA the best of luck, and we can’t wait for the opportunity to cheer them on during the games in Tokyo next year. And if you happen to come across the team (or Prince Harry for that matter) ask them about their challenge coins; we’re certain they’d be happy to trade with you.
