ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WSVN) — A life-changing accident could have ended one Florida teen’s athletic dreams. Instead, it gave her a brand-new passion and purpose.

Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Matthews is turning trauma into triumph, one stroke at a time, nearly a decade after a wrong-way crash.

“I was hit by a drunk driver going the wrong way on the highway,” she said.

Matthews said she can’t remember much from that horrible night in June of 2016.

“I don’t think it really set in until I woke up and I couldn’t feel anything,” she said.

The wreck left Matthews paralyzed from the chest down.

“‘OK, this doesn’t feel right.’ I think it hit when I got into a wheelchair for the first time,” she said. “‘This is the new normal, apparently.'”

Now a freshman at Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg

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