Sofia Anastasopoulos from Chicago's Dare2tri Paratriathlon Club shows William Joel a racing-chair technique at Chattanooga's clinic last weekend.Sports, Arts & Recreation of Chattanooga dared to try a paratriathlon clinic last year, and it went so well that the local chapter of Disabled Sports USA decided to have another.
That was last weekend, and top coaches Stacee Seay and Dan Tun from the nationally acclaimed Dare2tri Paratriathlon Club in Chicago - another DSUSA chapter - returned to lead the instruction. Coming with them were another coach, Sophia Anastasopoulos, and two of their elite disabled athletes, wheelchair-bound Jose Alejandre and blind Ashley Eisenmenger.
Brad Smith, who heads the Atlanta Triathlon Club's paratriathlon program, was another athlete helping after having to miss SPARC's inaugural clinic in 2016 because he was in a triathlon that weekend.
Also joining the instruction team at this year's SPARC clinic based at Girls Preparatory School was Signal Mountain's Liz Baker, who finished fourth in the visually impaired category of the women's triathlon at last year's Paralympics Games in Rio de Janeiro.
"The coaches were good, but having the athletes here to show how the techniques actually work was really great," SPARC president Jerry Hightower said.
"It was a truly amazing weekend. Having Liz Baker there just made it even more special," said his wife, Debbie Hightower. "She talked about an hour Sunday morning about her experiences and her training. One of the things she told them was that her training really was all wrong."
Baker, who was joined at the clinic by her husband, two children and mother-in-law, had said Saturday that she wasn't sure what her role would be. She emphasized that she still feels new to para sports and was soaking in the instruction she saw Saturday on the running and adaptive cycling portion on the Tennessee Riverwalk and the swimming aspects in the GPS pool.
A couple of weeks earlier, by the way, she had won an international competition in Australia that included the Rio gold medalist.
"I'm here to provide support, whatever I can do," said Baker, who works in the physical therapy field. "But I love this. I love just trying to get people involved. This is ultimately what I want to get into."
Saying what stuck with her the most from her Rio experience was the wide variety of disabled sports and people excelling at them, she added, "Adaptive sports are growing in our nation, and I want to be a part of that movement."
Seay and Tun have been big parts of the movement for a long time. Atlanta's Smith, 39, met them "a couple of years ago at the paratriathlon national championships in Arizona, and I knew what cool stuff they've been doing up in Chicago."
He had got to know Jerry Hightower when SPARC's president was helping with a handcycle clinic in Atlanta. Smith also is the paratriathlon representative for the USA Triathlon Southeast Region, so he said he wants to establish an Atlanta-Chattanooga "hub" for getting the word out throughout the Southeast.
"This has been good," he said near the end of the first day of SPARC's clinic. "I feel it has run smoothly, including the flipflopped start because of expected bad weather."
The participants with varied disabilities ranged in age from 9 to 53, and one young woman came from Smyrna, Ga. All had taken part in at least one SPARC program in the past, but none has done a triathlon. Two, though - David Cunningham and Johnathan Grimes - will do handcycling on the SPARC-sponsored teams with able-bodied swimmers and runners in the Chattanooga Waterfront Triathlon this summer.
"Last year here was one of the funnest camps we've ever done," Dare2tri head coach Seay said about her quick willingness to return. "The experience of seeing these people blossom with what we were doing was wonderful. We learned as much from them as they did from us. It was amazing.
"Literally it was one of our favorite camps ever. The volunteers were incredible and the kids were just amazing.
Anastasopolous, 28, said the excitement of the Dare2tri coaches about the 2016 Chattanooga clinic made her eager to take part in 2017. She first got involved with adaptive sports as a University of Illinois senior who was in a program working with the school's wheelchair track team in 2010.
"I like watching people try adaptive sports and watching them build their skills and confidence," she said. "It's been a great journey."
Eisenmenger, who has competed against Baker, is a 20-year-old with a bubbling personality to go with her athletic achievements. A triplet who was born prematurely without her retinas developing, she has been doing triathlons for two years. In high school she ran and played basketball.
Basketball? Really?
"I played it by sound," she said. "I think I was just really, really stubborn."
She joked with Baker about them taking up both seats on a tandem bike, but they showed the clinic participants some realistic tips, including slightly different ways of tethering with swimming guides so as not to affect their strokes.
"My favorite part about racing triathlons is doing things like this," Eisenmenger said. "Teaching other athletes with disabilities and developing really safe and competent guides. This is almost as much fun as racing."
Contact Ron Bush at rbush @timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.