Adaptive sports programs are successful on and off the field

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – In the gymnasium at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, student-athletes from the Jefferson County Public School adaptive sports team are busy completing one final practice before their first wheelchair basketball tournament. The team is called the Louisville Lightning.

Coach Amy Verst leads the preparation team. In wheelchair basketball, boys and girls play on the same team, which is made up of younger children. It is a sport JCPS students can participate in, along with archery, bocce ball and track and field.

It is designed for children with physical disabilities.

“We started last year just teaching them how to move the chair. Now to see that we’ve introduced a ball and we’re moving up and down the pitch, it’s just really exciting. It’s the best job ever,” Verst said between training sessions.

Verst is an experienced athlete who competed for Team USA at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics.

“I started playing wheelchair basketball in 1997, so I have a neuromuscular disease. That’s why I walk most of the time, but I can’t run and turn my head, otherwise the whole world will shake,” explained Verst.

Fellow Paralympian Dennis Ogbe also played wheelchair basketball on the world stage. Ogbe, originally from Nigeria, contracted pollio at the age of three. The disease left him paralyzed from the waist down. But his love of sport and a lot of hard work led to him regaining enough strength to walk again and compete in the Paralympics and several other competitions. Today he coaches the track and field team in the adaptive sports program.

“When we have this opportunity to talk to kids, young kids like that, we have to pass that torch. And as you can see, even in current basketball, there are many abilities, even if they are disabled,” Ogbe said.

Together, this group of coaches draws on their own life experiences with a disability to teach skills that go beyond dribbling a ball or shooting a bow and arrow. It shows children that no matter what happens, they can achieve anything they set their minds to.

“If you allow the kids to be who they want to be, of course they stumble here and there, but they can figure it out and play any kind of sport,” Ogbe said. “And when I say any type of sport, I mean it.”

JCPS’s adaptive sports program currently serves 40 to 60 students of all ages. Students do not have to be in a wheelchair and participation costs nothing.

“Winning is important, but we’re not just going to win by points, you know, we’re going to win when these kids build relationships and these kids feel supported,” Verst said.

This year, the Louisville Lightning is officially registered with the National Wheelchair Basketball Association and traveled to Cincinnati for its first basketball tournament in October. Verst says experiences like these are invaluable to children because they give them the opportunity to socialize and form friendships with children who share the same life experiences as them.

Louisville Lightning plans to add swimming, wheelchair tennis, sitting volleyball and cheer/dance to its program in the future.