Exclusive | Long Island teen inspired by local slain Navy SEAL hero overcomes paralysis and now wants to join up

A paralyzed teenage Long Island wrestler says he took inspiration from a local fallen Navy SEAL to recover — and now hopes to follow in his hero’s footsteps and join the elite unit.Finn Schiavone, 16, of Bay Shore suffered a traumatic brain injury in the eighth grade after accidentally being tossed off a wrestling mat and into a heating pipe, leading to the nightmare that no kid or parent would ever want to face.“I wasn’t able to walk, I could barely talk, I lost lots of my vision.…I wasn’t able to do school and was focusing on basic life skills like counting to 10,” Finn recently told The Post.The teen had to be homeschooled while confined to a wheelchair as he relearned the basic functions of his body and elementary rhetoric, such as being able to pronounce the word “firefighter.”Sensing the despair he faced, the teen’s teacher brought him to the Michael P.

Murphy Navy SEAL Museum in Sayville after his 2022 accident.“She thought it would inspire me because she knew how much I loved the Navy SEALs,” Finn said.After two years of grueling recovery — inspired by Murphy, a slain Navy warrior from Patchogue — Finn finally took his first steps with a cane last year and now aims to become a SEAL himself.“I knew if he was able to go through the hell that he went through, that I could go through my situation,” Finn said of the 29-year-old war hero, who died saving comrades in Afghanistan in 2005.“It’s your ‘why’ factor, really,” the teen said of his motivation.“You just have to find your reasoning, your purpose for what you do.

Once you find that, then the ‘how’ of actually achieving the goals doesn’t become an excuse anymore.”Finn said he was deeply moved by the museum, where he met Daniel Murphy, Michael’s dad.Michael, whose sacrificial heroics were retold in the 2013 film “Lone Survivor,” was part of a four-man team surrounded by more than 50 members of the Taliban in the Afghanistan mission.He, two teammates ...