Paralympian Mark Zupan, CE 99, and 100 other members of the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic teams were welcomed to the White House by President George W. Bush on Oct. 18.

Bush called the athletes "exemplary ambassadors" for the United States.
"To qualify for Team USA, you had to set high goals, devote long hours to training and outperform talented athletes from all across our country," he told the athletes and coaches in a South Lawn ceremony. "You faced the toughest competition and the highest pressure in all of sports. When the games were over, America had earned more than 100 medals, the most in the world. You made us all proud."

Zupan scored 15 goals to lead the U.S. quad rugby team to a 43-39 victory over Great Britain for the bronze medal.

"It was just amazing," he said. "The experience of playing in a medal match against world-class athletes was awesome."

Zupan, a scholarship soccer player at Florida Atlantic University, was left a quadriplegic after an auto accident in 1993. After months of rehabilitation, he transferred in 1995 to Georgia Tech, where he began playing wheelchair rugby.

"Wheelchair rugby is a full contact sport," Zupan explained. "It is essentially a mix of basketball, hockey, rugby and bumper cars. It can get pretty wild out there."

After graduation, Zupan accepted a job with an engineering firm in Austin, Texas and joined the Texas Stampede quad rugby team. The Stampede won the 2004 national quad rugby championship last spring and Zupan was named the most valuable player of the tournament. In June, the U.S. Quad Rugby Association named him player of the year.

Zupan said he plans to compete in the 2008 games in Beijing.

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