Sports are already hard enough for able-bodied people. The coordination and skill, the physical exertion, the next-day exhaustion and soreness – it’s a lot for anyone. Now imagine partaking in a sport when you have a disability. The challenge might be greater, but it’s not impossible, especially with the existence of adaptive sports. And here in Chattanooga, one all-volunteer organization has, for more than 30 years, offered adaptive sport opportunities for people with disabilities.
Through Sports, Arts & Recreation of Chattanooga (SPARC), people with disabilities can participate in sports such as water skiing, basketball and cycling. The organization offers adaptive opportunities for all ages and all abilities as appropriate for the sport, SPARC president Jerry Hightower says. And it’s all free.
Chattanooga-based organization SPARC helps people of all abilities enjoy water skiing and other sports
SPARC is a chapter of Move United, formerly Disabled Sports USA, which arose in the ’60s to support disabled veterans and first offered participants the opportunity to snow ski, Hightower says.
“[They] found that just getting people out of their houses and getting them on a mountain, doing some snow skiing, gave them not only socialization, but it also gave them some feeling of well-being about themselves, where they could feel like they were doing something and [that] actually life was not truly over,” Hightower says. “And it was also fun.”
The transformative aspect (and fun) of what the organization provided then continues with SPARC today – such as with their annual Water Ski Day, happening on August 2 this year. They also help people with disabilities to participate in the Waterfront Triathlon each June.
BJ Smoot, a SPARC participant and volunteer with Down syndrome, has learned how to water ski standing up, rather than using the adaptive sit-down ski, with the help of SPARC volunteers, Susie Baker says, elaborating for Smoot. For himself, Smoot says, “I have fun.”
“He does not drop. He does not tire out,” Baker says of Smoot’s skiing. “If you ask him, ‘Do you want to go again?’ he’ll always say yes. And it’s just amazing that he can do it.”
Trudy Harper, a SPARC volunteer and board member, got involved with the organization around 2007 after seeing SPARC volunteers and participants water skiing. Having a house on Possum Creek and a boat, Harper wondered how she could get involved. Her husband found the organization and reached out, and the rest is history.
“It’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever been involved in, in my life,” she says.
Harper has had the opportunity to teach people, Smoot among them, how to water ski, the sport she loves most. She feels that the participants are no different than anybody else, but they don’t have the same opportunities as everyone else. So it’s been a “really fun treat” to offer those opportunities, she says.
Joy is the response Cyndi Leach sees when people participate in adaptive sports. Leach, a SPARC board member, learned of the organization while she was competing to be Ms. Wheelchair Tennessee. She’s been active and independent all her life, not missing out on much – except sports, she says.
Once Leach went water skiing for the first time, she was hooked. She says it was an exhilarating experience, and she couldn’t believe she was actually doing it.
Gina Lackey, a SPARC participant with cerebral palsy, has taken part in the organization’s adaptive water skiing, as well as cycling. Lackey and her parents, Sharon and Larry, have been involved with SPARC since pretty much the beginning, Sharon says.
SPARC has helped Gina with her mobility and balance, she says. Participating in the organization’s adaptive sports has gotten her out of the house, allowing her to be with other people and have a good time.
Through SPARC, Gina has done things that her parents never thought she would be able to experience, Sharon says. The organization is the most supportive group for people with disabilities, and it will find a way to make things work for people, she adds.
Betsy Myers, a physical therapy professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a volunteer with SPARC, has seen some amazing things since joining the organization in 2015. There was a person who came out of rehab who thought he’d never be able to bike, Myers recounts. But with SPARC, he was able to get in and out of an adaptive bike on his own time, bike down the street and bike the bridge.
“He was so proud of himself,” Myers says. “He’s like, ‘Man, my life is no longer limited.'”
It takes a village for SPARC to put on something like its yearly water skiing event, Leach says. That means that the organization is always seeking volunteers. So next time you get outside, why not help someone else get outside, too?
To learn more about SPARC or to volunteer, visit sparctn.org.