Austin’s Story – Crossing the Graduation Line
Austin Schemrich’s high school track career as a sprinter ended abruptly on April 26, 2023—his freshman year at Teays Valley High School in Ashville, Ohio. He was riding home from track practice with his siblings in his mother’s car when a car crossed the center line and crashed into them.
The first thing he recollected afterward (he remembers nothing about the collision) was waking in the ICU at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. “I can’t talk. I can’t do anything,” he recalls. His family’s injuries were relatively minor, but the crash damaged the fourth cervical vertebra in Austin’s neck — a C-4 injury — paralyzing him from the chest down and to parts of his hands.
Initially, Austin’s survival was in question. And his doctors offered little hope he would walk again.
Skipping Ahead
Three years later, on May 22, 2026, his graduating classmates and their families and friends rose to their feet. They applauded enthusiastically as Austin crossed the gymnasium floor to accept his diploma at Teays Valley High School, as a cum laude honor graduate.
Helping him walk was an Ekso GT® exoskeleton — a 70-pound, wearable robot-like device. And there to assist Austin through the joyous event were Premier Health physical therapists Chris Colatruglio, PT, DPT, an Ekso-certified physical therapist, and Jim Christoffell, PT, DPT, NCS, a physical therapist and neurologic clinical specialist.
Austin’s walk to receive his diploma was a landmark step in a long-distance trek.
After the accident, Austin spent three months at Nationwide Children’s Hospital—a month and a half each in the ICU and the rehabilitation floor. After that came more than a year of outpatient rehab treatment at the Ohio State University Martha Morehouse Outpatient Care facility.
Austin vowed while still in the hospital that he would walk to get his diploma. “In the hospital, I definitely was a lot more hopeful that I would be, like, the accident never even happened,” he said.
‘Determined To Get Better’
As time went on, he became less confident that he would walk out of the hospital. Yet, he says, “I definitely am way farther than they said I would be. So that’s promising.” And his vision to walk for his diploma persisted. “If you quit, you don’t get better. So I was determined to get better.”
When he returned for his sophomore year of high school, he made his wish clear at meetings with teachers and school staff to develop a specialized plan of instruction tailored to his needs. His grandmother, Cindy Schemrich, who accompanied him to the meetings, remembers, “He told them, ‘I want to walk to get my diploma.’”
At the time, she admits, she was doubtful it would happen. “But then you think, if you have a drive in you and you really want something, you work hard to get there. And that's what he's done.”
The Quest To Graduation
His physical therapists at Ohio State encouraged him in his quest to walk at graduation. They told him about a robotic exoskeleton that was available for use at a Missouri hospital.
So, Austin and his grandparents made a trip to Missouri to see and try out the machine. But it was made for someone smaller than Austin.
They also scheduled a trip to a New York hospital to try out an exoskeleton there. A massive snowstorm got in the way of their plans, which returned Austin to the bottom of the wait list.
“This was probably a few months before my graduation,” he says, “and I was kind of like freaking out a little bit internally because I didn't know what I was going to do.”
Persistent as he is, though, he kept searching. He discovered that Ohio State had an exoskeleton. “I was like, okay, I'll probably go there. But their wait list was all the way out into June.” Too late for graduation.
Solution Found
He kept looking. Eventually, Austin found Premier Health, about an hour and a half from his home.
Austin soon began working toward his goal with Chris Colatruglio and Jim Christoffell at the Premier Health Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine facility on Brown Street in Dayton. Neurological rehabilitation is one of their specialties.
Austin had seven weekly sessions at the facility to prepare for graduation.
Before those could begin, Colatruglio had to see if Austin was up to the challenge of using the Ekso GT® exoskeleton.
“There's some worries and some concerns like can someone tolerate standing?” Colatruglio says. “That's the biggest thing for someone in Austin's situation, is can he tolerate that standing position for a long period of time?”
On His Mark
Austin had already worked through that issue at the Ohio State outpatient center, where he completed and excelled at standing frame exercises. “He had been in a standing frame multiple hours, multiple days, for multiple months, prior,” Colatruglio says.
Austin’s rehab sessions before graduation helped him practice with the exoskeleton. That included, Colatruglio says, learning how to “control the walker (exoskeleton) to make it so that he can truly feel like he's the one walking across the stage, and not this device, just going along for the ride, but he's the one actually accomplishing this.”
The experience was also challenging to Colatruglio. “I have never worked with (someone) like Austin before. I've had multiple patients in the exoskeleton before, but never someone who wanted to achieve this kind of goal on a public level.”
“Most of the time it's just, I want to be able to walk, and maybe a family member takes a video while they're in the gym doing it, but never like, hey, I want to go in front of hundreds to thousands of people and be able to show what I can do. So it was nerve-wracking at first. The gym is one thing, 20 people are watching, versus however many people could be at this graduation was a different thing.”
To see the experience, which Colatruglio describes as “one of the coolest moments of my career,” watch Austin use an exoskeleton to walk across the graduation stage.
Next Steps
It’s uncertain whether Austin will be able to walk again on his own. But Colatruglio says that exoskeletons have the potential to help people regain the ability to walk under their own power.
“It's not guaranteed, but the goal of the machine is to allow someone to take steps and create that muscle memory of, oh, my body can do this, I have done this…. It's designed to get people back up on their feet and potentially give them the ability to relearn how to walk. Having access to resources like this just allows someone to reach farther in their rehab process.”
Colatruglio adds, “My advice for someone going through something like Austin's situation would be never stop dreaming and never stop believing in yourself. Because we've seen remarkable things happen well after injuries. We all need goals to work towards no matter what it is in life.”
Of Austin, he says, “He deserves every ounce of praise and congratulations that he's going to get.”
Austin’s father, John Schemrich, says, “Premier Health does an amazing job of just asking what his goals are and helping him have a plan to obtain those goals. Thanks to Premier Health for everything. Without them, this wouldn't have been possible. Watching him walk was one of the best highlights of my life.”
Watch the full version of Austin’s incredible story.
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