Brent Kuemmerle was dealt a bad break in life, losing the lower half of his right leg in a car accident.

Instead of fretting about what he couldn't do because of his disability, he was determined to show what he could do despite that disability.

It's now his desire to coach others those who has that same competitive determination.

Kuemmerle, who was an avid rock climber before his accident in 1995, taught himself to become a better climber with his prosthetic leg. He learned to become a snowboarder when there were basically no opportunities to compete in the sport as a disabled athlete.

Based in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Kuemmerle, a former Rapid City resident, has just created a non-profit organization called Tahoe Adaptive Competition Center.

His mission statement is simple: Train any athlete who wants to compete at any form.

If you want to compete in local competitions, we can do that. If you want to compete in regional competitions, we can do that. If you want to make the U.S. Paralympics team and go to Russia, we can do that, Kuemmerle said.

Kuemmerle is coaching snowboarding, a sport where competitive coaches were few and far between just after his accident. In fact, when he first started snowboarding unlike skiing -- the sport wasn't in the Paralympics Games and it was hardly offered as a recreational lesson.

He spent essentially the last 10 years helping create an educational record and the national standards so there is a complete teaching progression available. The 2014 Paralympics Games in Russia will host the sport for the first time.

The goal of most disabled sports organizations, Kuemmerle said, is to allow people with physical challenges to be able to compete or at least participate in sports that they either used to compete in or are interested in. He said that snowboarding is just another avenue for people to slide down the hill.

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Creating a path: Kuemmerle teaches snowboarding to disabled athletes