Washington soldier competing in Invictus Games in British Columbia
STEVENS PASS, Wash. – Under bluebird skies over the MLK holiday weekend, a uniformed instructor followed a skier down a trail at Stevens Pass.
But that student wasn’t any ordinary customer looking to improve their parallel turn.
With an American flag neck gaiter warding off the chill, Bremerton resident Bianca Hayden paused at the foot of Kehr’s Chair to absorb tips from David O’Donnell. Hayden, 24, is an Army sergeant who will compete in this week’s Invictus Games in British Columbia.
Founded by Britain’s Prince Harry in 2014 to help service members recovering from wounds or injuries find renewed purpose, the Invictus Games will debut a first winter edition in Vancouver and Whistler.
The event, which started Saturday and runs through Feb. 16, will bring together 550 military service members from 25 countries, and Hayden is the only Washingtonian on the 51-person Team U.S. roster.
Almost three years after Hayden suffered a shoulder injury while on deployment grievous enough that it threatened her ability to stay in the Army, she will compete in swimming, indoor rowing and Alpine skiing.
While participating in the “open” division for those with use of both arms and legs and no visual impairment is a personal achievement, she will also be cheering on teammates with more debilitating injuries like amputations and paralysis in a sporting event that encompasses a wide range of experiences – from combat wounds to cancer diagnoses.
Under the watchful eye of her instructor at Stevens Pass, Hayden concentrated on fine-tuning her form – though not quite at the precision level of a Lindsey Vonn or Mikaela Shiffrin. After all, it was only her 15th day on skis.
But Hayden’s eagerness to compete – even at a sport she hasn’t quite mastered – is a testament to the determination of this helicopter machine-gunner and cavalry scout.
While some soldiers would have seen a potentially career-ending injury as an easy ticket out, Hayden fought through military bureaucracy to finish her service commitment.
From only having use of one arm, to regaining the physical strength and mental confidence to push her body with both, Hayden is a testament to the Invictus Games’ premise that sport can motivate wounded military service members to regain hope for the future.
“She never gave up. I saw her go from no range of motion to reaching for 90 degrees,” said Cindy Abrahamson, a fellow soldier who served with Hayden in Afghanistan. “I saw the light spark in her eyes again. Now that she’s on Team U.S. in the Invictus Games, that spark is a huge bonfire.”
Seizing opportunities
An 18-year-old Hayden made a promise when she enlisted. “I told myself at the beginning of my career that if an opportunity was given to me, I would take it,” she said.
In June 2019, Hayden, who grew up in Eugene, learned that her Oregon Army National Guard unit was being deployed to Afghanistan. Her role was to refuel Chinook helicopters dismantling bases amid the U.S. withdrawal. But Hayden aspired to do more than stay on the ground, fuel hose at the ready. So she became a door gunner, stationed at the Chinook’s window with a machine gun.
The upcoming deployment, now in a combat role, amped up her family’s worries.
But Hayden kept her cool throughout the roughly five months she spent in Kandahar, even though combatants shot at her chopper and targeted her base.
Under rules of engagement determined by a U.S.-Taliban peace treaty, she couldn’t return fire.
“Once in a while I questioned: Why did I choose a more dangerous job?” she said. “But then, I just love it.”
Hayden’s unit left Afghanistan in October 2020. She was later promoted to sergeant and became a cavalry scout.
With her new unit, Hayden deployed to eastern Poland in February 2022 just as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Her unit made a show of force along the Poland-Belarus border and visited orphanages housing Ukrainian children, but the deployment was otherwise quiet.
Hayden embraced the physical demands of military service. She hit the gym most days, on top of her unit’s five-mile runs, sprints, flag football games and rucks with 50-pound packs.
But in June 2022, while Hayden was doing a dumbbell shoulder press, something popped in her dominant-side left shoulder and it swelled up.
She was diagnosed with a strain and told to wear a sling. Two weeks later, she couldn’t brush her hair or put on a shirt and had to sleep with her arm dangling off the bed. An MRI showed a fractured humerus.
The driven soldier struggled with her newfound limitations. The military’s grit-through-pain culture, coupled with a feeling that she was held to a higher standard as her unit’s only female cavalry scout, compounded Hayden’s frustration.
“When you get injured, nobody wants to say anything,” said Hayden, who tried to stay active despite her injury. “The last thing I wanted to do was sit in my room on limited duty.”
By November 2022, Hayden’s shoulder was still nonfunctional and she was posted to Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s Soldier Recovery Unit. In low spirits, she wallowed in denial about the seriousness of her injury and self-doubt that she was too weak for military service.
“The shoulder injury dragged her down and made her into someone I didn’t recognize,” Abrahamson said.
A surgeon diagnosed Hayden with a torn labrum, and she recalls wondering if she was wasting the doctor’s time with a “tiny little tear.”
It turned out to not be so tiny. A January 2023 surgery showed that the labrum tear had ripped Hayden’s bicep and doctors had to shave off 50% of the cartilage before installing six anchors.
Recovery was excruciating. Hayden began physical therapy but saw little improvement. Medical staff at JBLM began pushing her to return to her unit or take a medical discharge. She felt caught between two bad choices, and mentally she was at an all-time low.
Hayden was doing physical therapy in the gym one day when soldiers running an adaptive sports program set up an air rifle that could be fired with one hand. Intrigued, she gave it a shot – and quickly dived into other adaptive sports like single-arm rowing, swimming, archery, discus and shot put. Her competitive juices began flowing and she set the goal of beating the best times and distances on record at JBLM in a variety of one-handed sports.
After demanding a second opinion on her stalled recovery, Hayden underwent an additional surgery in October 2023 to add seven more anchors.
On the other side of that operation, 16 months post-injury, Hayden finally turned a corner.
“I was able to do things like pull a door open and I wasn’t so scared of my shoulder dislocating,” she said. As her shoulder improved, so did her prospects of finishing out her military service. “I finally felt like there was some hope for me staying in the Army.”
By November 2023, Hayden received full medical clearance to stay in the Army: “The moment I had all the approvals to stay was a huge weight off my shoulder, literally,” she said.
In the U.S. military’s adaptive sports community, the ultimate goal is to earn a spot on a branch’s team to compete in the Department of Defense Warrior Games, the event that inspired Prince Harry to start the Invictus Games. Hayden made Team Army last year and even threw out the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners game (with her good shoulder).
In June, she joined more than 200 service members in Orlando, Florida, for the Warrior Games. By then, she had progressed to the point where she could use both arms – even though she had only trained for competition in one-armed formats, like pinning an arm to her side while swimming or using a mouth tab to shoot a bow and arrow.
Competing in the event’s “open” division, for those with use of both arms and legs and no visual impairment, engendered some impostor syndrome.
“I felt like I didn’t belong because my injury seemed so insignificant,” she said. “I was scared to swim with both my arms because I’d been training with one (meanwhile) there are amputees who don’t have the option to swim with both their arms or legs.”
Meeting other athletes without visible disabilities, like cancer survivors, affirmed the validity of her own injury. “Many athletes suffer from ‘invisible wounds,’ which can include a recently healed physical injury, in the case of Bianca, or other nonvisible illnesses or injuries such as traumatic brain injury, cancer, or PTSD to name a few,” wrote Team U.S. Head of Delegation David Paschal via email. “Events like the Invictus Games recognize the traumatic impact of invisible wounds and these athletes’ participation in adaptive sports greatly aids in their recovery journey.”
Hayden brought home considerable hardware for Team Army – gold in 50M freestyle and 50M breaststroke; silver in shot put, discus and 100M freestyle; and bronze in women’s swimming relay – but, she said, “Afterward, winning a medal feels like the least important part of the competition.”
Based on Hayden’s performance, she was invited to try out for Team U.S. in the Invictus Games.
Athletes will compete in sports like wheelchair basketball and rugby, sitting volleyball, swimming and indoor rowing. The winter edition also includes events on ice and snow like Alpine skiing, biathlon, nordic skiing, snowboarding, skeleton and wheelchair curling. Like the Paralympics, athletes compete in divisions based on how much use they have of their arms, legs and eyesight.
When the Invictus Games application asked about winter sports experience, Hayden marked “skiing” – even though she’d only spent two days on skis.
She attended Team U.S. training camps in Park City, Utah, and Lake Placid, New York, but the rest is self-coached and self-funded. While Oakley donated helmets and goggles, she’s still training on a secondhand pair of skis and boots from a Seattle ski swap.
Just weeks before hitting the slopes at Whistler in pursuit of gold, Hayden was fine-tuning new concepts like upper- and lower-body separation to make for smoother, faster turns through the race gates.
As the on-snow day wrapped, her instructor, a former Australian special forces soldier eager to help a fellow service member, offered up an adage from his old unit: “Train hard, fight easy.”