Bay Shore athlete makes full recovery after traumatic brain injury
Finn Schiavone, who recovered from a traumatic brain injury, was honored last month with the American Red Cross on Long Island's 2026 Youth Hero Award. Credit: Linda Schiavone
When a doctor told Finn Schiavone he would never walk again, he promised himself that he would prove him wrong.
The Bay Shore High School student-athlete has fully recovered from traumatic brain injury that left him unable to walk or talk in 2022. The injury occurred when his head struck a metal heating pipe during wrestling practice after he and his partner strayedtoo far off the mat.
Schiavone, then an eighth-grader, was briefly unconscious and initially only had a "really bad headache," but his condition worsened two weeks later and he was rushed to Good Samaritan University Hospital, he said.
"One day after school I just lost the ability to walk, talk, read or write," said Schiavone, 18, now a senior. "It literally happened all at once."
The Bay Shore teen was transferred to Cohen Children's Medical Center and then to a separate rehabilitation facility before returning home in a wheelchair about five months later. He attended physical therapy several days a week but saw “no progress," he said.
“It got to the point where one of my doctors told me to my face that I would never walk again," Schiavone said.
His turning point came during an inspirational visit to the Lt. Michael P. Murphy Navy SEAL Museum in West Sayville, where executive director Chris Wyllie shared his own story of overcoming injuries that had prompted his medical discharge in 2000. That initial visit led to a friendship.
“Finn couldn't speak very well, but I could see something in this kid," Wyllie said.
Months later, a rejuvenated Schiavone asked the former Navy SEAL to push his wheelchair during the 2024 Lt. Michael P. Murphy Run Around Lake Ronkonkoma. Unbeknownst to Wyllie, the teen was determined to surprise his friends and family by standing and walking during the four-mile race.
To achieve his goal, Schiavone increased his physical therapy sessions — which included electrical stimulation therapy to his legs — to six 10-hour days a week at Metro Physical & Aquatic Therapy in Commack.
Four months earlier he had been unable to stand. By race day, his speech was slowly returning and he completed the final 100 feet with a walker.
“It was beyond inspirational,” Wyllie said. “And thereafter he kept getting better."
Today, Schiavone said he is "120% recovered" and feels better than he did before his injury. He is on his school's varsity swim team and even earned a 5, the highest possible score, on an AP exam, he said.
He was also honored last month with the American Red Cross on Long Island’s 2026 Youth Hero Award.
“I’m so blessed and thankful for a second chance at life,” Schiavone said. “I don’t intend on wasting it.”
Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.
