Top Teens

Meet the 13 winners of the 2016 Bethesda Magazine Extraordinary Teen Awards

April 7, 2016 1:24 p.m.

Nick Blasey

Senior, Landon School

Nick Blasey was a 13-year-old competitive skier when his older cousin and mentor, Kevin Dyer, was paralyzed in an automobile accident in December 2010.

Nick flew into action, organizing a solo ski-a-thon in which he skied more than 100 runs at a Pennsylvania resort and raised $13,000 to buy Kevin a rehabilitation bike. Nick, a Bethesda resident, began working soon after with SPINALpedia.com, a Potomac-based online mentor network and instructional video database for spinal cord patients.

SPINALpedia.com co-founder Josh Basile says it isn’t unusual for family members of newly paralyzed people to rush into action and then slowly fade away. But Nick, now a senior at Landon School, redoubled his efforts over time. He spent his weekends speaking about SPINALpedia.com at expos and adaptive sports events. Three years ago, he organized what has become an annual event at Landon in which students and faculty volunteer to spend a day in a wheelchair to gain an understanding of the daily challenges and accessibility issues. During the summers of 2014 and 2015 he participated in George Mason University’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program for bioengineering, teaming up with other students to design a sensor-equipped walking assistance device and sensor-equipped crutches that function better on stairs. Working with Kevin, he designed a prototype for a wheelchair seat riser in 2014. Why is he so dedicated? “Because at the end of the day, I don’t want people to see Kevin in a wheelchair,” Nick says. “I just want them to see Kevin.”

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Now 18 and director of community outreach for SPINALpedia.com, Nick plans to major in biomedical engineering at Dartmouth College. He is still a skier, as well as a rock climber and a member of Landon’s rugby team. He’s also an AP Scholar with a résumé full of extracurricular activities. “Nick models a genuine humility that’s rare for someone his age,” says Landon humanities teacher John Botti. “His kindness, humanity and passion are not for artifice; they are essential parts of who he is.”

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