When Maddie Wilson was 4 years old, her parents took her to watch the Boston Marathon. When she saw the wheelchair racers zoom past, she knew in an instant that she wanted to race alongside them.
“I was like, ‘Wow, this is really something I would want to do,’” Maddie says. Competing in her first 5K when she was 5, Maddie has been rolling along the track with a lofty goal in mind ever since. “My biggest dream ever since I was really, really young [is] to do the Boston Marathon.”
Adaptive sports go beyond just offering another activity in which children with physical or developmental disabilities can participate. They allow these children to access an important part of what sports offer: an opportunity to dream big.
Maddie, who turns 16 this month, will have to wait two more years before she reaches the minimum age requirement to enter the Boston Marathon.
But until then, she is hard at work. Training several times a week, she requires extra equipment to keep herself competition-ready. During the warmer months, she finds herself on the track three of four days a week, but when it’s cold or rainy out, Maddie gears up to train inside. “I have [equipment] almost like an indoor treadmill,” she explains. “It has two big metal rollers, and I’ll put the two back wheels on the roller, and then the front wheel, you basically wrap it on and use Velcro to secure it in, and it’s almost like a stationary bike.”
Making Sports Accessible for Everyone
To make training like Maddie’s possible, it’s important that local community spaces make their athletics accessible to all.
Frederick County’s own Nicole Cantwell is a recreation specialist for the county’s parks and recreation department, where one of her responsibilities is helping to grow its adaptive recreation program.
The adaptive recreation programs change based upon the season, including sports such as basketball, coed cheerleading, gymnastics and even adaptive martial arts.
These programs are “mostly geared toward individuals with intellectual disabilities or cognitive impairments,” Cantwell says. “A large group of our participants may be on the [autism] spectrum.”
Adaptive equipment is available for participants based upon their individual needs. For participants with gross motor skill impairments, for example, there are different sized balls or rims for basketball. “All of our participants send in a health and skills form that talks about their needs and their abilities, and then we … adapt from there,” Cantwell says.
Fostering Connection With Peers
Being able to participate in these adaptive sports also comes with the added benefit of connecting with peers and the community as a whole.
Cantwell loves the impact that she sees from these sports programs on the participants that goes beyond the physical health benefits of staying active. “I feel the community involvement, like making friends,” is a great benefit, Cantwell says. “It’s a little harder for some of these kids to make friends in other settings, but when it’s doing something fun [like this] with teamwork, it’s easier for them to go out there.”
For Brendan Aylward, it’s about seeing these athletes viewed in the same way as peers of all abilities.
“I got my start with the Special Olympics in high school … and I was immediately drawn to it, and it definitely changed the trajectory of my career,” Aylward says. After studying special education in college, he went on to open a gym where Special Olympics athletes can train.
Since opening his gym, Aylward loves seeing the community embrace people of all abilities and loves seeing everyone “being part of a community that’s not segregated. Even in special ed programs, there’s some degree of isolation,” he says. “You might be included within certain classes, but you’re not necessarily authentically included amongst your peers.”
“I think one thing that sports does a really good job of is it educates people without disabilities about disabilities and adaptive sports in particular,” he continues.
The rise in popularity of the Paralympics has shown that “adaptive sports are not less, they’re just different. There’s still elite athleticism involved,” Aylward says.
In the three years Cantwell has been with the Frederick County Parks and Recreation department, she has worked hard on expanding the program and is loving the progress she sees. “Having the kids be excited to be part of the program … and gaining the trust of the families and the kids consistently coming back, I think that’s the coolest part of my job, just seeing them thrive and succeed.”
Aylward agrees. “I think sports give people the opportunity to figure out what they’re capable of, whether they have a disability or not.”
Learn more about Frederick County’s adaptive sports program by emailing [email protected].
