Before he settles in to talk about his life, Chris Etheridge is zipping around the coffeehouse in his wheelchair. 

Using his right leg for propulsion, he tends to his 4-year-old son Aiden, seamlessly navigates around the numerous tables and chairs cramping the floor, and even makes it over a small riser without any assistance.

Watching him, it’s easy to see the missing left leg is not the body part that bothers him most these days. That distinction belongs to his aching right arm.

“I had surgery in December for a torn rotator cuff and a torn bicep muscle,” he said as he rotated his arm. “I can’t train until March.”

Although he often uses his arms to get around, the real effect of the injury is that it’s keeping Etheridge away from the sport he loves. The 41-year-old Raymond resident is one of the top wheelchair softball players in the world.

Etheridge is president of the National Wheelchair Softball Association and, last October, traveled to Japan to play for the United States in the sport’s World Cup. He has helped bring the NWSA’s World Series to Mississippi and is working with cities around the state to have adaptive sports fields built into their new or existing recreational facilities.

Wheelchair softball gave Etheridge an outlet and a new mission in life, following a dark chapter in the wake of the car accident that took his leg in October 2005.

“If you’re in this position you have been dealt a pile of poo at some point. You can continue to wallow in squalor like a pig or you can rise above it,” Etheridge said. “You have to accept the challenge and accept to be better. It only took me 40 years to realize that.”

Etheridge was working as a basketball and softball coach, as well as the athletic director, at Porter’s Chapel Academy when his wreck occurred.

He was on his way to Vicksburg one morning when another driver, apparently blinded by the sun, crossed the center line on Mississippi 467 between Raymond and Edwards. Another driver in front of him veered off the road, leaving Etheridge to take the hit in a head-on collision.

“There was nothing he could do,” Etheridge recalled. “Either he took the hit or I did.”

Etheridge had to be cut out of the vehicle and spent several weeks in the hospital. He wound up losing his left leg and, while he wasn’t paralyzed, lingering nerve damage prevented doctors from fitting him for a prosthetic. That meant he would need a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

For a man who was active and sports-minded, it was a devastating mental blow.

“You’re a youth pastor, a high school coach, and then that happens. People expect you to immediately rise above it. To put your faith in God and know everything happens for a reason. I did that. It was what was expected of me,” he said. “I guess about six months after that it caught up with me that I wasn’t OK.”

Etheridge went through a difficult emotional period. He left Porter’s Chapel in July 2006 and was forced to deal with not just his injury, but the reality that it might have cost him his career.

“A coach is what I am, and after the accident I had to evaluate that,” he said, adding with a chuckle, “There were not a lot of high schools knocking my door down for a coach that lost a limb and wasn’t having the best mental stability at the time.”

Through some connections, Etheridge was able to land a job at Central Hinds Academy in Raymond. He coached the school’s fast-pitch softball and boys basketball teams and gradually got his life back in order.

He started going to church again, and it was there that he met Antonio Wright, a man who had rolled down Etheridge’s path. Wright had been a football player and later coached in the Jackson Public School district until he was in a car wreck that left him paralyzed.

While rehabbing from his injury, Wright had started playing wheelchair sports. He and Etheridge hit it off immediately, and Etheridge soon found a new world opened up to him.

“When Antonio and I talked on the phone for the first time, we clicked. It was symbiotic. We were brothers that had never met,” Etheridge said. “Antonio got me playing wheelchair basketball and tennis.”

Etheridge did well at other sports, but when he was introduced to wheelchair softball in 2011 he truly found his athletic passion.

Just a few months after he started playing, Etheridge was asked to join an all-star team from Massachusetts called the Boston Rolling Red Sox. He traveled around the country with them for several years, then formed the Mississippi-based Deep South Hurricanes.

“We decided it was time to build a team on the Gulf Coast. We recruited athletes from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina,” Etheridge said. “We were terrible, but we built it and raised the funds to do it.”

The Hurricanes steadily improved, and Etheridge started to grow in influence in the National Wheelchair Softball Association. His team was selected to host the NWSA’s World Series in 2015 and again in 2016. The latter featured 22 teams — including several from Canada, Japan and Nigeria, in addition to U.S.-based squads — and was one of the biggest in the organization’s history.

Meanwhile, Etheridge also decided to rededicate himself to getting better on the field.

“After we didn’t win in 2015 I really started to commit myself to the sport. When we didn’t win in 2016 I realized I didn’t deserve anything,” he said. “I started to put the work in. I was lifting weights and training to get better.”

All of that hard work culminated in a year to remember in 2017. At that year’s World Series he was selected as the best position player for the second time. Once more qualifies him for the NWSA Hall of Fame. Later on, he was picked to join Team USA at the World Cup in Tokyo. Wright was also on the team.

Etheridge’s 13-year-old son Ryan accompanied him on the trip, and he said sharing that moment was something he’ll treasure forever.

“The best thing about it was playing and my son being with me, and him being named the flag bearer for Team USA,” Etheridge said. “I don’t know if there’s anything better. That’s what chokes me up, is my 13-year-old being able to see me wear the colors.”

Etheridge added that the World Cup was the high point of his wheelchair softball career. The sport is not part of the Paralympics, so the World Cup is its biggest stage. He helped Team USA go 6-0 and win the tournament championship.

“I’m looking at these guys as we’re getting our medals, and there’s not a dry eye to be found,” he said. “Everything we worked for culminated in that moment. Knowing they’re feeling the same thing you felt, representing the U.S. at a tumultuous time, just coming together to represent your country … it doesn’t get better than that.”

While his softball career reached its pinnacle in 2017, Etheridge’s life and work away from the field was also on an upswing.

He left Central Hinds Academy in 2011 to work with Wright at Metro Area Community Empowerment. The non-profit group works to improve access, as well as provide experiences and outlets, for disabled people in Mississippi.

Etheridge is currently working with a couple of cities to have all-play parks — playgrounds and athletic fields designed with hard surfaces for wheelchair access, as well as ramps and other amenities — included as recreational facilities are upgraded.

Etheridge said being able to play a sport provides much more to the disabled than just exercise.

“The best thing adaptive sports offers, whether it’s fishing or jumping out of airplanes, is hope,” he said. “Hope that there’s life post-accident, and I can still do the same things as before I got hurt. We’ve really done a lot in the state teaching disabled sports and getting people moving.”

Etheridge received his masters degree from Mississippi College in 2013 and has since taught political science classes there and at Hinds Community College’s Vicksburg campus.

He’s stepped away from coaching but avidly roots for his son Ryan when he plays for Florence-based Discovery Christian’s basketball and baseball teams. He said he’s enjoying being a dad to Ryan and Aiden and a husband to his wife Heather.

“The last two years have been an amazing ride,” Etheridge said.

Helping others tread the same difficult path he has is also rewarding, he added. While he’s proud of his softball accomplishments, it’s the way his involvement in the sport has helped him grow and mature as a person that’s really made it worthwhile.

“I’m a much better guy from the wheelchair than I was standing up. I’ve reached more people from the wheelchair. I know without a doubt that things happen for a reason. I think I got to where I was supposed to be. If I can give hope to anybody, that’s what we try to do,” Etheridge said. “I’d rather it happen to me than somebody else. It was tragic, but I’m OK with it. It took a long time to make peace with it, but once I did I’m OK with it.”