Long Beach Island is situated close enough to the mountains that, as a teenager, Jenny Ackers could take day trips from her home in Brant Beach to ski resorts just a few hours’ drive away. Ackers, now 36, started snowboarding while a freshman in high school. It was in her senior year, while riding with friends and family at Mountain Creek, in Vernon, that another snowboarder crashed into her, causing a brachial plexus injury – specifically a C5-C6 nerve avulsion – that meant a loss of motor and sensory functions in her right arm.

Ackers is the fifth of six kids, a close-knit bunch whose parents both taught in the Southern Regional School District.