The 2026 Winter Paralympic Games open this week and North Carolina will have one of its own competing for gold in Italy.
Kayden Beasley, a Coats native, is one of 17 players who will be representing Team USA in para ice hockey, otherwise known as sled hockey, as they aim for a fifth straight Olympic championship.
“It’s really cool,” Beasley said about the opportunity. “It’s the first Paralympics I’ll have been to, so I’m excited.”
Beasley, 19, is a congenital bilateral amputee, meaning he was born without legs.
But despite his condition, Beasley has never let it slow him down, participating in all sorts of recreational sports from flag football to soccer.
However, it wasn’t until 2019 that he tried an adaptive sport. Already a fan of the hometown Carolina Hurricanes, Beasley heard about the Carolina Hurricanes Sled Hockey team and decided to give it a shot.
“I liked the game before I started sled hockey, so it was an easy way to get into it,” Beasley said.
“The first day he came onto the ice, he got in a sled and took off,” recalled Carolina Hurricanes Sled Hockey coach Geoff Wing. “He skated around for 30 minutes and I went up to his dad and was like, ‘Has he ever done this before?’ He just seemed like a natural from the first moment he was on the ice and just got better from there.”
Not only did he get into the sport, but so too did his brother Caleb. Both Kayden and Caleb are adopted from China and share a close bond both on and off the ice.
“We did everything together growing up even to now,” Beasley said. “We push each other and just having someone at home to talk about it with has been really fun.”
In fact, the entire Beasley family is a close knit clan, one who Kayden has credited time and time again as his biggest source of support.
And that support has led him to the opportunity of a lifetime.
Beasley’s rise in the sport has been meteoric to say the least.
From getting involved in sled hockey at just 12 years old, it took him only a few years of development before he started to garner national development team interest.
“Just getting to the development camp is a process of its own,” said Danny Morganelli, another Carolina Hurricanes Sled Hockey coach. “Only 60 people in the entire country are invited to that program and then he was invited back each year before he was then invited to join the development team. It’s not something just anyone gets a chance to do. It’s very elite.”
“If you think about all the skaters in the world in the United States that have tried this, he’s one of the top-15 skaters in the country,” Wing said. “So that’s pretty amazing, particularly because he just started a few years ago.”
The 19-year-old defenseman has stood out amongst his peers for a while now and his coaches say that the things that stand out the most in his game are his speed, size and hockey sense.
“He’s usually the first one to the puck and he can then dictate what happens next,” Wing said. “Once he gets the puck, he knows what to do with it and he knows where to be without the puck and how to intercept a pass or get a pass.”
While it will be his first Paralympics, this will actually be Beasley’s third international competition as he represented the USA at both the 2025 International Para Hockey Cup and 2025 World Para Ice Hockey Championships, where he helped his team take home the gold.
Now, his aim is to add yet another gold to his resume and help Team USA sweep the ice hockey podiums.
But even beyond the gold, Beasley is hoping to inspire the next generation and grow the sport that he loves.
“I just want to bring awareness to the sport and what it can be in the future,” Beasley said.
“I think there’s a number of parents and kids at home that are trying to look for a sport and a lot of times when you look at hockey, people think that it’s too dangerous,” said Shane Willis, who, on top of doing color analysis for Carolina Hurricanes games, is also the organization’s manager of youth and amateur hockey. “We’re here to tell you that it’s not. We’re going to take down every single barrier that’s there for you and your family to get involved in what we feel is the greatest sport in the world.”
Beasley and Team USA will first face Italy in the preliminary round on Saturday, March 7.
