Growing up as one of four siblings, she said, “It was like I had three constant competitors and needed to find a sport that challenged me.”
For 12 years, she trained as a gymnast, but then found her real passion in a different kind of acrobatic sport: diving.
“It was a natural switch, and I truly love it,” she said.
A successful high school diving career earned her a spot on the Division I diving team at Grand Canyon University in Arizona. But in November 2025, just a few months into her sophomore year, a single dive at practice changed everything.
“I’d already done something like seven dives on the 10-meter platform, so nothing was out of the ordinary with my body,” she said. “But I went up there, and every time I'm on the 10-meter, I always pray before I go just to make sure because I'm like launching myself off of a 33-foot platform.”
The second she hit the water, she knew something was wrong.
“My chin was down, which exposed the tippy tippy top of my neck, where all of the nerve endings are,” Hailey-Cate said. “It was like I felt a chill down my whole body, and then I couldn’t feel anything anymore.”
‘Learning how to do life again’
After seven hours and countless tests in the trauma unit of the local hospital, Hailey-Cate learned that she had sustained an acute spinal cord injury at two levels of her spine — C1-C2 and T12.
For seven days, doctors pumped blood pressure medication to her spine to reduce swelling and restore feeling. But every day was different, with fleeting sensations in her hips and legs, but nothing consistent.
With her father, boyfriend, and friends at her side — as well as with the overwhelming support of her teammates and coaches — she realized the road ahead was going to be more trying than anything she’d experienced before.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better village. My entire team of 50 came to see me,” she said. “I learned a lot in the ICU and feel like I truly did see life in a different way. I saw people with worse injuries than me, and so I felt grateful for what I had. But you also feel that moment of how different things are going to be.”
When she left the hospital, it wasn’t to go home or return to school, but to learn “how to do life again” at Barrow’s Neurological Rehab Center.
“That was a big change,” she said. “It was a very difficult situation to go from being an athlete and flipping off a 10-meter platform to learning how to walk again.”
Accustomed to training hard, Hailey-Cate pushed herself. On top of the recommended four-hour therapy sessions, she opted for extra rehab — every day for five weeks. Instead of running and diving, she practiced the activities of daily life, from getting out of bed and standing up on her own, to transferring into a wheelchair and getting in and out of the shower independently.
Even the trip home — navigating an airport in a wheelchair for the first time — was its own lesson. “The airport is a very scary place when you’re seeing it in a wheelchair for the first time and I don’t think people have that perspective until you’re given it like I was,” she said. “And I think it was a perspective that was given to me for a reason — and that’s one of the reasons why I just really like telling my story because it changed my life.”
Waking up the ‘athlete inside’
The day before, they’d tried a different device with little success. Hailey-Cate was nervous, but she felt a change the moment she put the sleeves on.
“I truly felt like the athlete inside of me could be back again,” she said. “It felt like it challenged me in a way that nothing else could, and it really just allowed the athlete in me to be alive again.”
From that day, Hailey-Cate used the sleeves in every rehab appointment — on the treadmill, outside, and over uneven and new terrain.
“I walked on rocks for the first time, which was such an incredible feeling because not only could I feel like myself again, but it also gave me a sense of my legs back,” she said. “It brought back more feeling in my legs than I had before.”
Newly motivated, Hailey-Cate set a goal to take her first steps before her 20th birthday in January. Within days — even before the deadline she’d given herself — Hailey-Cate put on the Neural Sleeves and walked on her own for the first time since the accident.
“That was a really, really big moment for me because it was a goal I had for myself — like athletes set for themselves — and I really didn’t think that it was going to happen because at that moment I was in a wheelchair,” she shared. “But I was able to do that, and it was huge for me.”
Inspiring the athletes in others
Before the Neural Sleeve, she said, walking felt disconnected and ungrounded — like walking on a cloud. But the ability to feel her feet again gave her hope that she was on the path to recovery.
“Feeling a little bit more normalcy in my life was so incredible. I’m nowhere near 100 percent right now, but I’m still really working to eventually get back to the sport I love. It’s a long ways away, and I understand that. But I think that’s where the passion is on why I work so hard because I truly do love my sport,” she said. “I love my team, and I really love the life I created for myself at GCU, and I feel like Cionic was a big piece of getting me back to the life that I love.”
Now a sophomore at GCU, Hailey-Cate is back to living on campus, “doing life in a different way” with a wheelchair and arm crutches. Regular physical therapy and everyday Neural Sleeve use are also part of her routine. Reaching for the fifth-floor elevator button, waking up unexpectedly to a fire alarm, realizing the standard dorm room bed is too high — some adjustments were expected, others more surprising. They’ve all been a lesson in patience and gratitude.
“I feel like it’s stretched my horizons even more because you’re kind of forced into a place where you have to do more,” she said. “You have to wake up and be okay with what you have for that day and still make the best out of every day.”
Family, friends, and her faith continue to give her momentum, as does the “athlete inside” who’s stronger than ever.
After a conversation with her father, she said she had a mind shift. Before her accident, she set long-term goals, like making it to the NCAA or qualifying for a regional championship. Now, she thinks in terms of daily goals: getting in and out of the car by herself, and walking into PT independently.
“Growing up in gymnastics and with siblings, it gives you that self-drive, which is such an important thing for people to have, especially with accidents,” she said. “I’m just inspired to try just as hard as I can with the self-drive that I have, to not only inspire others, but get back to the athlete I was before with the perspective that I have now.”
Through injury and recovery, Hailey-Cate said she feels even more connected to her body — how it works and doesn’t work — and to the mental strength that’s propelled her from a young age.
“I actually truly do believe that the athlete I was before is nowhere near the athlete I am now,” she said. “And I have a perspective that I want to do so much with, like inspiring others in rehab to know that they are athletes. They’re working with their bodies and setting goals for themselves. We're all being athletes for ourselves when we connect to our bodies in ways that we never have before.”