When he was 18, Mark Zupan’s life and athletic career drastically changed. A victim of a car accident 12 years ago, Zupan is now in a wheelchair but hasn’t abandoned his athletic inclination. After being thrown from the back of a truck, Zupan found himself lying in a canal, unable to use his legs. After being found, he woke in a hospital bed with a broken neck, unable to speak. Using a letter board, he communicated his first message, spelling out “I am lucky?”

“I found that letter board to be one of my best friends those first couple of weeks in the hospital,” Zupan said during a speech at the Memorial Union on Tuesday night.

His second best friend he found to be his teeth.

“Trying to use my hands was like having mittens on and trying to open something.” Zupan said. He explained his first experiences in trying to apply deodorant with the limited abilities of his teeth.

Zupan, who is featured in the recent documentary “Murderball,” spoke of seeing the friend who was driving during the car accident for the first time while lying in his hospital bed.

“When he walked in, I said to him, ‘What? I don’t have a problem.’ I had already completely forgiven him.” Even though Zupan had forgiven, he said that he understands what his friend was going through. “How do you deal with putting your best friend in a wheelchair?”

Even so, Zupan was able to overcome his disability and this has led him to many new experiences. After his recovery and rehabilitation, he adapted his love for sports from soccer to quad rugby, affectionately called “murderball.” In his new sport, he has achieved such honors as a starter on the No. 2-ranked team Stampede from Austin, Texas, and was a starter on the team’s 2004 Para-Olympic team in Athens.

Caren White, freshman in pre-landscape architecture, said she came to hear Zupan speak even though she hadn’t seen the movie because she was “interested in hearing what he had to say.”

“I saw him on ‘The Tonight Show’ and thought he was an interesting guy,” said Justin Messmer, senior in accounting.

“After this, maybe I’ll go to see the movie.”

Zupan is currently preparing for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China.