MILAN — From the ice, Jack Wallace keeps turning around. Standing a few rows up from the glass, Wallace’s parents, siblings, extended family and friends are waving, decked out in red, white and blue jerseys with “Wallace” on the nameplate. Grinning, he lifts his arm in salute and pumps his chest. With a thumbs up, he turns back around.
His United States teammates on both sides, Wallace waits for the ceremony after he and his teammates Sunday won the team’s fifth straight gold medal with a 6-2 victory over Canada. Once that gold — Wallace’s third — is placed around his neck, he bites it, posing for the cameras, and turns back around to his family, raising the medal high so they can see. The Wallace crew, around 25 deep, cheers loudly. His dad, John Wallace, raises three fingers in reply to his son.
Not only did Wallace record a hat trick Sunday and win a third gold medal, but the United States also completed an Olympic and Paralympic sweep of golds. It’s the first time that all three hockey tournaments (Paralympics, Olympic women and Olympic men) featured a U.S. vs. Canada gold medal game in the same year. Wallace’s performance Sunday meant he joined the ranks of clutch hockey stars, including Megan Keller and Jack Hughes, who had gold-clinching overtime goals at these Games. While the Paralympic team didn’t need overtime to pull out the win, Wallace was a steady presence all game.
Jack Wallace (third from left) scored three goals to lead the Americans past Canada in Sunday’s sled hockey gold medal game at the 2026 Winter Paralympics. (Marco Mantovani / Getty Images)
“It never gets old,” John Wallace said. “We’ve seen it a couple of times, and it’s just validation for all his hard work and everything he puts into it. And that’s a great team, and there’s a lot of leaders on that team, and you don’t win a game like this without good leaders and hard work.”
John Wallace has been one of them since he joined the team in 2016. A Franklin Lakes, N.J., native, he lost part of his right leg in a boating accident at age 10. He discovered sled hockey at Camp No Limits, a program dedicated to people with limb loss, and became more enamored with it watching his now teammate and five-time Paralympian gold medalist Josh Pauls. Wallace’s aunt, Gina Sullivan, said, “I remember him sitting in our living room watching a game, saying, ‘I could do that. I could do that.’
“Yeah, he can do that,” Sullivan said Sunday from the stands.
As his younger cousin Katie Sullivan said, Wallace doesn’t have “no” or being told “he can’t do something” in his vocabulary.
After making his Paralympic Games debut in 2018, Wallace was named the best defenseman in Beijing. But Wallace hasn’t been busy just on the ice: He’s also been a member of the U.S. paracanoe national team since 2022 and fell just short of qualifying for the 2024 Paris Paralympic Summer Games. In combination with his Summer Paralympics attempt, Wallace spent the last four years after Beijing learning to train better, focusing on nutrition and recovery.
Coming into the Games, Wallace highlighted the U.S. sled hockey team’s biggest strength as its skating. The amount of training the team was doing was visible in the players’ speed as they raced across the ice Sunday. While the U.S. didn’t initially dominate the game, like they had in other contests these Games, Wallace was a constant, getting a goal in each period and being a force around the puck.
It wasn’t an accident, as the coaching staff was prepared for Canada to be locked in on Declan Farmer, who had tallied a hat trick in all four of Team USA’s games leading to the gold medal game. Coach David Hoff was looking for someone such as Wallace or Brody Roybal to step up.
“Obviously, Jack answered the call tonight,” Hoff said. “Once he got rolling there, he really dominated the puck. It’s hard to take it away from him. He just creates so much space out there. As much as it was the scoring, I thought the fact that he just possessed a lot made it really hard for them to generate anything as well.”
After the team skated out of its medal line to huddle for the national anthem and photos were taken, Wallace moved fast. Off the ice, he jumped up into the stands and headed up the stairs straight to his family, embracing his parents and all those who came to support him.
“That’s who we do it for,” said Wallace, who along with his teammates didn’t get this moment at the Beijing 2022 Games due to COVID-19 restrictions. “We play for each other, with all the people back home that have been supporting me since my entire life. But obviously, when I was 10 years old, and first getting into sled hockey … they’ve pushed me, they’ve supported me, and they’ve been there for me every step of the way.”
The man of the hour, Wallace is the first of his teammates through a door at a Milan restaurant, where the team’s biggest supporters are already waiting and cheering their arrival. But Wallace is in high demand with the media waiting to speak with the night’s big star before he can fully join the celebrations. In between interviews, he’s stopped for photos and congratulations. Once done, he can finally join his teammates and family and friends to celebrate four years of hard work.
“This is the best,” Wallace said. “This is what it’s all about. All the stuff on the ice, all the accolades, we obviously celebrate with our teammates. But once you get here, this is where you get to enjoy it the most.”