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Tampa native scores 2 goals in US Paralympic sled hockey gold medal win

Declan Farmer is a three-time gold medal Paralympian.

BEIJING, China — The U.S. Paralympic sled hockey team won its fifth overall Paralympic title with a 5-0 victory over Canada on Sunday.

Tampa-native Declan Farmer, 24, scored two of Team USA's five goals. During Sunday's game Farmer also became the all-time U.S. leader for Paralympic points and assists, according to Team USA.

After Sunday's victory, Farmer said their triumph stems from within their team, giving credit to everyone including the coaching staff.

“We don’t get here without having such a great group of guys to train and play with. We were made from each other,” Farmer said in an interview.

The three other team goals came from team captain and four-time Paralympian Josh Pauls with one goal and Brody Roybal who also landed two in the net.

The U.S. win over Canada in the Paralympics means the U.S. now holds five of the eight Paralympic golds in the sport since it was introduced in the 1994 Games. No one other country has won more than one gold in the winter sporting event.

Farmer, the 24-year-old sled hockey player from Tampa, is a three-time Paralympian and has won gold at each Winter Games he's participated in. He graduated high school from Berkeley Prep School in 2016 to head on to Princeton University and graduate with the class of 2020.

Farmer has been playing sled hockey since he was 9 years old, according to his Team USA biography. He was born a bilateral amputee and got his start in sled hockey at a clinic in Clearwater, Florida. 

His athletic career doesn't stop at the U.S. Paralympic sled hockey team. Farmer is a part of the Tampa Bay Lightning sled hockey team and the Florida Sled Bandits.

   

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