ALUMNI: School teacher crosses channel after injury

PHOTO: Davis High alumnus Joshua Halprin Jackson enjoys bodysurfing on Sandy Beach.

By Eitan Rosenheim,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

Joshua Halprin Jackson was crossing from Molokai to Oahu, Hawaii, as part of the M20 Prone Paddleboarding Championship, when the current changed. 

This was his first major race since recovering from a shattered disc in his back. After surgery and a year of physical therapy, Halprin Jackson was finally ready to compete again.

He felt good during the first 20 to 25 miles, but towards the end of the race the tide changed.

Halprin Jackson described this moment as “a time to get your head in the game.” 

“My mindset was not that I was going to compete. I just wanted to do it and I knew I could,” Halprin Jackson stated. 

Halprin finished the long paddle in 2017, even with the tide against him in the last eight miles.

“Completing the race really meant a lot to me,” Halprin Jackson said. “I am back.” 

A Davis High graduate from the class of 1999, Halprin Jackson studied physics and got his BA in psychology from UC Santa Barbara. 

“My junior year really prepared me for college,” Halprin Jackson said. He described his junior year at DHS as very challenging, but helped prepare him for the struggles of college.  

After college, he spent time in Los Angeles before settling in Hawaii, where he teaches science to seventh graders at Punahou School. 

A long-time surfer, Halprin Jackson loves the ocean. But in the winter of 2014, while surfing at Sunset Beach, he suffered a terrible injury.

“I got caught inside and took a bunch of waves to my head,” Halprin Jackson said. “I was ragdolled.” 

Halprin Jackson estimated that the wave reached 20 to 25 feet high. “It felt like I had gotten hit by a bus,” Halprin Jackson said looking back at the injury.

“I had grown up skate and snowboarding; I thought I knew pain. It was a whole new level of pain,” Halprin reflected. “There is nothing like a back injury.” 

Halprin Jackson had ruptured a disc in his back, with pieces of his disc lodged in his spinal cord. The pain was so intense that when he tried to stand, he’d often end up on the ground.  Despite that experience, he was not deterred.

“I want to do [Prone Paddleboarding] again, and I want to do it better,” Halprin Jackson said.

“There are people who do what they are supposed to do to get better, and there are people who talk about what they are supposed to do.”

Halprin Jackson tried physical therapy to recover from the injury. He learned that bits of his shattered disc had gotten into his spinal cord, killing the nerves to his left calf and weakening that leg. 

Halprin Jackson found an army doctor to perform surgery. “He could do this in his sleep and he did a great job,” Halprin Jackson commented. 

After a year of recovering Halprin Jackson could finally return to the ocean. He was more determined than ever. 

Halprin saw the 32-mile journey across the Kaiwi Channel as “a rite of passage,” and “a way to make it back.”