BEVERLY — A little snowstorm is not going to stop Endicott College right winger Jack Smiley from taking the plunge into the icy Atlantic Ocean. Recovering from a stroke, he finds that the frigid dip jumpstarts his brain and soothes the muscles sore from hockey practice and weightlifting.
“The little voice in my head is always screaming to get the heck out,” says the Endicott Gulls captain. “But it’s an opportunity to show your own mind that you can do things it thinks you can’t.”
Smiles, as his teammates aptly call him, was paralyzed on his right side after collapsing at practice on Feb. 21, 2022. The sophomore was 22 years old.
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“It was a two-on-one backcheck drill, so we were going up and down the ice at a very fast rate and playing hard,” Smiley says. “My limbs were not doing what I wanted them to do. My foot wasn’t working in the way it should to get me where I wanted to go.”
He managed to get to the bench but couldn’t catch his breath. He was numb on his right side and could barely talk.
The trainer asked him to name the president of the United States.
“And I couldn’t. I was sitting there for probably two minutes, just thinking hard, and I couldn’t name him.”
Doctors believe the stroke was caused by a previous hockey hit to the neck that fractured a vertebra and eventually triggered a blood clot to his brain stem.
Doctors at Mass General Hospital’s neurological intensive care unit couldn’t tell him if he would ever walk again. His parents and teammates rushed to his side as much as COVID restrictions would allow.
When Gulls hockey coach R.J. Tolan talks about Smiley, he becomes emotional.
“It’s hard not to tear up a little bit when you’re thinking back, having seen a 6-foot-5 guy over the course of 10 minutes become immobile and we have to carry him out of the rink. I’ve never met a more positive person. I mean, he’s a special person.”
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Tolan knows how hard this is for Smiley, who is back practicing with the team for non-contact drills and also serves as an unofficial assistant coach on game days.
When Tolan played at the University of Lowell, he was hit in the throat by a puck and had to have a tracheotomy performed just to breathe.
He says he is amazed at Smiley’s attitude.
“It was great before,” he says. “And then it was like pouring gasoline on the positivity once he couldn’t move.”
“He relearned every trait that a human has to learn when they’re born. So essentially, two years out, he’s not only relearned so much of that, but he’s on the ice, starting to participate with a college hockey team.”
Smiley told Dr. David Lin, a critical care neurologist at Massachusetts General, he would be back on the ice in three weeks.
Three weeks later at Spaulding Rehabilitation with staff help and a walker, they pushed him around the ice, then led him through up to seven therapy sessions a day.
When Smiley returned home to Bucks County in Pennsylvania, he designed his own physical therapy program. He studied dancing with a Philadelphia Eagles cheerleader and trained with a mixed martial arts fighter.
His teammates are in awe of the biggest guy in the team, size-wise and heart-wise.
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“He never has a bad day. I knew once he has a goal, he doesn’t stop until he gets that goal,” says Gull center Zach Mazur.
Number 10 is back on the ice but at 75 percent capacity on his right side.
“I realized at this point that my competitive hockey career is probably over, and I won’t ever skate another truly competitive shift, where I’m focused on putting the puck in the net more than I am on falling. And with that, I just set the goal, get back on the ice, be able to take a stride in the game jersey, and then retire on my own terms.”
Senior day at home ice, Endicott’s Raymond J. Bourque Arena, is Feb. 10 against Suffolk.
Smiley has been cleared to play.
“It just depends how comfortable the coach feels on putting me in. At the end of the day, I still want to do what’s best for the team.”
Tolan does not want to put pressure on Smiley, though if he were to take a shift, the coach knows there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.
But that isn’t priority number one for Smiles.
“My main goal in life is now just to help as many people as I can through sharing my own journey.”
He has documented every step of his recovery on social media, garnering more than 2.6 million likes on TikTok.
Strokes affecting the young are becoming more common in recent years for reasons that are otherwise unknown, says Lin, the Massachusetts General neurologist.
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He wants to partner with Smiley at his MGH NeuroRecovery Clinic.
“In terms of motor gains, he’s the most impressive patient I’ve seen. He wants to understand how to make an impact,” says Lin. The last time Lin saw Smiley, he says, the high-spirited player was skipping through the halls.
It’s hard to catch Smiley not smiling.
“If you’re breathing fresh air, you always have something to be grateful for because you have an opportunity to make a better tomorrow,” says Smiley.
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Signs of a stroke include sudden numbness, confusion, trouble speaking, seeing, and walking, according to the CDC. Stroke treatments that work best are diagnosed within the first three hours of symptoms.“ The Act F.A.S.T test offers advice on recognizing signs of a stroke:
F- Face Ask the person to smile. Does one side of the face droop?
A-Arms: Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?
S-Speech: Ask the person to repeat a simple phrase. Is the speech slurred or strange?
T-Time: If you see any of these signs, call 911 right away.”
Stan Grossfeld can be reached at stanley.grossfeld@globe.com.