Wheelchair sports help emotional, physical health
Disabled persons’ tournaments are increasing
Taking the Nike "Just Do It" ad to heart, a Philadelphia rehab facility developed a comprehensive and successful athletic program for area spinal cord injury (SCI) and other disabled persons.
The program, which began in 1984, now includes quad rugby, wheelchair basketball, martial arts, wheelchair tennis, and weightlifting. About 45 athletes, eight coaches, a team nurse, and other volunteers participate in the Magee Wheelchair Sports Team, founded by Magee Rehabilitation hospital.
"Oftentimes, spinal cord-injured people don’t know how to resume their previous activities,
so this program helps them get back into their activities," says Pat Thieringer, CTRS, director of community programs for Magee Rehabilitation.
Thieringer commonly hears SCI athletes say they are
sorry they didn’t get involved with the wheelchair sports program sooner. Most had waited three to five years post-injury before participating, although the SCI patients who are six months post-injury do better emotionally, she notes.
"The athletes don’t have as many bumps in the road and don’t get involved in as much drug and alcohol abuse and depression," she explains. "Numerous studies have shown that wheelchair athletes have fewer significant problems related to spinal cord injuries, urinary tract infections, pressure sores, cardiovascular problems, and other problems that are mostly related to inactivity."
Wheelchair sports programs may pay huge dividends for the participants, but they are not easy to implement, Thieringer acknowledges.
She offers the following pointers in starting such a program:
1.
Convince board and managers of its benefit. Most hospital administrators are concerned about liability issues in sponsoring wheelchair sports programs, Thieringer says. While their concerns are understandable, they are not based on data, she adds.
"After 15 years, we can say there have been no serious injuries related to the wheelchair sports program," Thieringer notes. "What we have found in our research is that you have a much greater risk when taking a newly injured patient than in anything in the wheelchair sports program."
First, convince the executives
If the first obstacle is to convince rehab facility executives the program is not a liability problem, then the second obstacle is to find staff time to organize it, and the third obstacle is funding.
The athletes mostly will not have money to pay for the equipment, travel expenses, and other costs, so the rehab facility will need to find grants and sponsors to cover the costs, which can run in the tens of thousands of dollars.
2.
Raise funds to buy special athletic equipment. The sports chairs weigh about 20 pounds, considerably less than the 30- to 35-pound regular wheelchairs. They cost about $2,000 per chair. Other expenses are the hotels and van transport when the athletes have to travel to another city for competition.
Magee Rehabilitation funded the sports program with $10,000 per year for the first decade, and then the hospital turned to fundraisers and grants to buy new equipment, Thieringer says. "As the program grew, we needed more and more money," she adds.
The hospital each year held a fundraising event called the Magee Derby, a horse-racing event held at the Garden State Park with a silent auction, dinner, and raffles. The fundraiser received sponsorship packages from local corporations, and the proceeds went to a different hospital program each year.
"Then I went to the head of the hospital and explained our need for a regular source of funding, and he suggested the derby proceeds go to the wheelchair program each year," Thieringer says.
The derby raised more than $40,000 for the program, and that’s the annual funding. Because it’s the only fundraiser, the athletes are expected to raise $250 toward the derby by selling dinner tickets, raffle tickets, or finding corporate sponsors. "They can sell tickets in the lobby of the hotel if they don’t have connections," Thieringer explains.
3.
Find staff and other volunteers to participate. "It takes a really special person to volunteer that kind of time," she says. "Sometimes, if we leave for a game on a Friday, we can get the hospital to give them time as educational or professional time, so they don’t have to take paid time off, but they volunteer their time on Saturday or Sunday games."
Magee’s program has a basketball coach who has experience as a coach for a college student basketball league. Other coaches are therapists who work at Magee or some other facility. Most are able-bodied, but occasionally a wheelchair-bound person will help out.
Therapists, families volunteer to help
"Support staff tends to be therapists and family members, and a lot of times they’ll volunteer to be scorekeepers or to help with transferring wheelchair athletes," Thieringer says.
4.
Find athletes and decide on which sports to offer. Magee’s athletes range in age from 18 to over 60, and each person has a neuromuscular disability, including SCIs, post-polio syndrome, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, amputation, or neurofibromatosis.
Participants must commit many of their weekends to the sports. The wheelchair basketball team meets for a game each week and travels four weekends each year, for example. The quad rugby team practices each week and has three or four competitions each year, and the wheelchair tennis team travels to four or five competitions each year.
Paraplegics can participant in all of the sports, except quad rugby. That sport is for athletes with a permanent disability affecting their upper and lower extremities. However, a C-5 quad patient is the highest injury level who can manage the chair well enough to participate in the quad rugby.
Even playing field
Quad rugby is played on a basketball court with four-member teams, using a volleyball. They succeed when they carry the ball across the opponent’s goal line. Each participant is given a point, ranging from 0.5 to 3.5, depending on their injury classification level, and there can’t be more than eight points on the floor at any given time. That levels the playing field. The players with higher disability levels can play defensive positions and leave ball handling to athletes who have some arm function.
The rugby athletes use special gardening gloves that help them grasp the ball, and they are permitted to keep the ball in their laps for 10 seconds before they have to pass, shoot, or move the ball.
Wheelchair tennis athletes follow the U.S. Tennis Association rules, except that wheelchair players are allowed two bounces instead of one. Therefore, they can play against each other and against able-bodied tennis players. This sport is open to any wheelchair participant with a permanent injury.
All wheelchair sports are subject to rules by the Wheelchair Sports USA governing body, which classifies athletes according to their injury level. Teams play against similarly injured competitors and progress to tournaments, as do other amateur sporting events. For example, Magee will host the National Wheelchair Basketball Association Sectional Championship in March 2001.
Magee’s wheelchair basketball team, called the "Sixers Spokesmen," is one of 17 teams nationally affiliated with a local National Basketball Association team. In the Sixers’ case, the team partners with the Philadelphia 76ers. The Sixers Spokesmen are divided into an "A" team with experienced players and a "B" team with rookies. The "A" team was undefeated in the 1999-2000 season and won a ninth consecutive mid-Atlantic Conference title. The "B" team had seven wins and 10 losses.
"Our coach and the players have done a tremendous job," Thieringer says.
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