Timothy Alexander, a paraplegic athlete and motivational speaker, presented to the school at an assembly on Thursday, August 11, touching on themes of motivation, goals, inspiration, and living a successful life. 

With his smooth oratorical style and deep, rich, booming voice, Alexander could convince even the most stubborn audiences of anything. 

And yesterday during two school-wide assemblies, he hooked the Paly community after just the first words of his moving story. 

“I am the first paraplegic athlete to receive a full-ride scholarship at a D1 school, and I never touched the football field,” Alexander said. 

He spent the next 70 minutes explaining how this feat was possible.

“It’s all about your vision,” Alexander said. “It’s about being uncommon.”

During Alexander’s senior year of his school, he was in a tragic car accident and snapped his neck; the doctors told him he would not be able to move again. They proclaimed he would be confined to a bed for the rest of his life, losing all possibility of maintaining his previous quality of life. But his mother, one of his most inspirational figures, wouldn’t believe this. 

“She said ‘son if you can hear me, blink your eyes’ and when I blink that yes I could hear her, she told me I was going to be just fine,” Alexander said. 

And since that day, he has dedicated his life to being not “just fine,” but great. He worked in school, even when teachers said he couldn’t do it. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. He worked on the field, when people scoffed, saying a paralyzed man can never be on the football team. Alexander showed them the truth: you don’t have to be on the field to be on the team. 

“I can play through my team,” Alexander said. 

But he did more than just play through them. In a sense, he was the spirit of the team. He lifted them up from the sidelines, doing push-ups and sit-ups throughout practices. Cheered when the team scored and inspired when they needed motivation. 

“I would run through a wall for my team, run through a wall for my coach,” Alexander said 

But what moves Alexander? He motivates others, but what motivates him? What has inspired him to ruin the predictions of doctors, teachers, and haters?

He enumerated that the key is a growth mindset. The key is to have goals and reach for them. To never relinquish opportunity.

“It doesn’t have to be easy, it just has to be possible,” Alexander said.

That was the message he left the Paly community with. He inspired us to be uncommon, to follow our vision. He moved hundreds of souls and touched hundreds of hearts. After the assembly had finished, people flocked to him, some in tears, to express inexpressible gratitude for him, his message, his existence. 

Paly senior Phela Durosinmi especially felt like he took something away from Alexander’s speech. 

“I think his words will be something that returns to me when I might be going through a low point, and I think that hearing his story also will give me the courage to persevere through the hard,” Durosinmi said. “It also motivated me to stray from taking the easy way out, and instead work harder because I will gain more from it.”