Moments later Wheeler skillfully pilots his chair, which looks like a dented hulk of junkyard scraps, across the goal line for yet another point. They call the sport "murderball."

"The fact that my last name is Wheeler and I am in a wheelchair is kind of funny," said Wheeler, who lives in Provo. "But I have only been in a chair for two years, and I have had the nickname of "Wheels" since the first grade. It is kind of funny to me that everything is ironic and now sometimes people are scared to call me "wheels" because I am in a wheelchair and I might get offended or something."

The reality is that it would take a lot more than a simple nickname to offend Wheeler, and even more to get him down. Wheeler lost the use of his legs and partial use of his left hand after a serious motorcycle accident. He said his biggest struggle after the injury was being dependent on other people, though he's learned to do almost everything for himself now. But despite the severe injuries, which make once-simple tasks difficult, Wheeler is perpetually smiling and living his life with the fervent intensity of a teenager.

"My attitude has been for a long time that if there is nothing you can do about it then don't worry about it and get over it," Wheeler said. "So when I woke up and realized that I was kinda inhibited in a few areas, instead of just getting down on myself I just took the challenge and tried to go with what I got. I am grateful because with the compressed scull fractures I could have had less use of my brain, and with the break in my neck I could have been a lot worse off. So I am grateful for what I do have."

During his recovery, a therapist introduced Wheeler to the sport of murderball by giving him a copy of the documentary movie on the sport, "Murderball," which was released in 2005. Wheeler has always been athletic and wasn't about to let a wheelchair stop him from enjoying the excitement that sports have always brought to his life.

"I am 28 now and I was 26 at the time of the accident," Wheeler said. "I was going to school and playing a lot of sports which I really enjoyed. But now I play murderball. I played football growing up and really loved the hitting, and everything about football. After my accident I tried playing a little bit of wheelchair basketball but I don't have enough trunk muscles to be able to do that very well anymore. Then I got introduced to murderball and it was very much like football, which I liked more than basketball anyway. It was something where I could get out there and get a little bit of an exhilarating game time."

Compared to most of the people on Wheeler's team (the Utah Scorpions based in Salt Lake City) Josh is pretty well off. He has great use of his arms and can maneuver his wheelchair with a level of agility that makes him difficult to block and almost impossible to catch once he gets moving. But the rules of the sport require a balance of power on the team in order to ensure both fairness and afford players of all levels of ability to excel at the sport.

"Depending on each player's level of function they get classed from .5 to 3.5," Wheeler said. ".5 being the least functional and 3.5 being the most function you can have and still play the sport. My classification is 3.5 which is the highest. When you are playing you can only have 8 points on the court at a time. So when I am on the court I am almost half the points. So we have to have 3 other people on the court with lesser classifications in order to compensate for the high point value that I have."

Off the murderball court, Wheeler lives in an apartment on his own, does his own shopping and gets himself to class at BYU, practice and the gym with a car that has specially designed hand-operated throttle and brake controls. He is grateful to have family nearby and the support of such a tight-knit community between Provo and his friends at BYU. He hopes eventually go to medical school and become a family practice physician.

"I drive a minivan right now, which is very classy as a young single guy," Wheeler said. "As a young guy you pull up next to a cute girl and you want to flirt with her and the first thing she does is look to see how many car seats I have in the back. Then if I get a date, everyone thinks that we are married because we are driving around in a minivan."

As difficult as using a wheelchair and driving a minivan have been for Wheeler, those are not the most difficult challenges of his life.

"When I was 16 I had a really good friend who was hit by a car while riding a bicycle and was killed," Wheeler said. "It was a hard part of my life because only two weeks prior to that my Dad and I were driving and wrecked in a pickup and he died in the wreck. That's a lot harder for me than my accident. It was more difficult. I can take a physical challenge, that's fun for me. That was much harder for me.

"There have been hard times, but throughout it all I have known that everything is going to be all right. I might miss a transfer, I might not make it from my bed to my chair or my chair to the car but those are simple things. Knowing that I have help, that the Heavenly Father is there for me, has been really good."

For more information on murderball visit the International Wheelchair Rugby Federation at www.iwrf.com