Jumping into the world of adaptive sports

Over the past three weeks, I have tried wheelchair tennis, hand-cycle mountain biking, and hiking in a Track chair for the first time ever! All were unique and special in their own way, but the best word to describe all of them is freedom. I could play sports again! I could bike on the same trails I used to! I could hike in the mountains with my friends! 

The first activity was wheelchair tennis, I was never any good at tennis before the accident, but it didn’t matter because I would have had to relearn post-accident either way! The community was outstanding. Everyone was so welcoming from the players to the coaches and even the parents. I was able to make so many new friends and connections and learn so much about the game, especially because prior to this practice I knew nothing about tennis at all! (It seems complicated but it really isn’t) I was so jazzed about it that I looked into my friend Eric's suggestion of a tennis camp in the cities. I will be heading there this weekend! 

Next was mountain biking. I had ridden on hand cycles in the past, even mountain hand cycles. But I had never ridden them on an actual trail. After getting to try out a couple bikes the first day on some blacktop paths it was time to hit the trails. The first part of the trail was just a gravel path, but soon we were on some real terrain. They called these trails “features” in Minnesota we would just call them trails. Ironically the group that provided the bikes and took us on the trails was called TRAILS! They were all amazing people and each had something very unique to offer. 

At around this time, I started to realize how different it felt to ride these bikes in treacherous terrain. I had no concept of what was safe or what was too much. The line between tipping over and staying upright felt impossibly far from where I was, but my friends were falling over doing basically the same things I was. I decided to play it safe as much as possible and stay within my comfort zone. 

The last activity was climbing a mountain in a track chair, this was awesome getting to use one of these chairs in action because I had been in them before, but never knew what they could do! I was able to go on a hike with my friend Griffen up a pretty steep hill! Each of these pieces of equipment allows me to get back to the things I would have thought impossible to do as a paralyzed person. They allow me the freedom that I felt was taken from me at the time of the accident.