Virginia Tech’s annual spring football game on Saturday was delayed for about an hour after a skydiver, who was part of the pregame festivities, crashed into a scoreboard at Lane Stadium. Posting on social media after the crash, the skydiver  Pasha Palanker gave more details, explaining how the unexpected wind made him lose control.

“The impact knocked the air out of me,” Palanker wrote on Instagram two days after the crash. “For a second… nothing. No sound. No breath. Just me… hanging from the jumbotron. I looked down. Long way down. And the same wind that slammed me into that structure… could take me off it just as fast.”

“Then I focused on the canopy, keeping it from inflating with every gust. Stay still. Stay controlled. Wait. My shoulder, back, ribs… all lit up,” he added.

Just before the Hokies got out for James Franklin’s first spring game as the Hokies’ head coach, Palanker was in a group of three performers who were to parachute onto the field. However, his parachute canopy got caught on the top of the video board overlooking the stadium’s north end zone and broke off the “C” and “H” letters in “Tech” on the scoreboard.

The Fastrax parachute demonstrator remained dangling in the air for about 25 minutes. The American flag in his hands could have aided the wind in pulling him off, but he released it to help him focus on stopping the balloon from inflating. It was a grueling battle, both internally, with pain, and externally, for his life.

“Combat teaches you something, not how to be fearless…but how to function anyway. So I went to work. No panic. Stay still. Stay controlled. Wait.”

Palanker waited, and not long afterwards, he was rescued by members of the Blacksburg Volunteer Fire Department, who could not reach him with their truck No. 11’s 75-foot ladder. But truck No. 12 came to the rescue with its 100-foot ladder.

Of the three skydivers, only one landed safely in the stadium as planned, as the other landed on the practice field behind the north end zone stands.

Palanker had similar plans, but the scoreboard would not permit. Speaking to ABC News, he recounted that “as I was turning to try and go into that field, another wind shear came in and just slammed me into that jumbotron”.

Regardless, Palanker was grateful for the scoreboard, admitting “it could have been much worse,” if the parachute had not come to his rescue.

He concluded his long Instagram post appreciating the responders and the Hokies and their fans for the support.

“Stay alive Stay in control. Get through it, and I did. I’m here. Banged up, but here. Grateful for the first responders. Grateful for the support. Because the hardest moments in life don’t break you. They forge you.”

Palanker is no stranger to such tragedies. As a result, he rejected the idea of visiting a hospital and was instead treated in an ambulance just behind the area where he crashed, and had his left arm in a sling afterwards. But he was lucky enough not to break any of his bones in the process.

Who is Pasha Palanker?

Pasha Palanker is a military veteran, a retired U.S. Army Special Operations Master Sergeant. After leaving the military, he picked up a career in mental health advocacy and public speaking, before his crash has now made him a Hokie hero.

Palanker’s time in the army had helped him prepare for the Lane Stadium crash, as he was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star Medal with Valor for surviving several military catastrophes. He served in Iraq on counter-IED operations, where he had a close-range encounter with a suicide bomber and sustained several blast injuries.

The crashing skydiver sees his job at the parachute team as very therapeutic, finding “that meaning that I was missing from my time in service. And it’s a ton of pride for me to fly an American flag into an event with thousands of people watching us do that.”