Power Grid Blog
Sports, Disability, and Equality
February 4, 2013 | John Register
I applaud the U.S. Department of Education’s guidance regarding the inclusion of athletes with disabilities into mainstream sporting activities at the K-12 level.
Sports plays a profound role in American society and far too often, school aged children with disabilities are not allowed to share in this experience with their able-bodied classmates.
I grew up as one of those able bodied student-athletes, playing many of America’s past times sports. I loved playing baseball and running track and field. I learned great life lessons such as: playing by the rules, being humble in victory, and gracious in defeat. I benefited and grew from the expertise of coaches.
My athletic abilities in high school even earned me a scholarship to the University of Arkansas, where I earned a BA in communications; while becoming a collegiate 4xAll-American in track and field.
All of those life lessons were arguably the building blocks to how I later play in society as an adult. I work with teams on the job and I develop strategies for the greatest and most beneficial outcomes in the work I do. Competing on teams also helped me get through one of the most devastating periods of my life.
You see, my dream was to one day represent my country at the Olympic Games and I qualified for two Olympic Trials; once in the 110m high hurdles and once in the 400m intermediate hurdles. As I was training for my third Olympic Trials I mis-stepped a hurdle, landed awkwardly, dislocated my left knee, and subsequently underwent an amputation of my left leg.
I was thrust in to the world of “disability.”
To my surprise I found that people with disabilities had barriers and those barriers had nothing to do with the persons’ ability. The barriers had mostly to do with other people’s perceptions of what they felt the barrier was for the “disabled” individual.
Disabled youth who wish to play on their local school sport teams have been at the mercy of those administrators who have determined what a persons’ life should or should not be allowed to do. Similarly, my wife Alice, a very smart, young, African-American, high school senior was told by her southern high school advisor not to apply to higher education, but rather attend a trade school; likewise many disabled athletes are told to sit it out because there is no place for them on their sports teams.
So, if children (K-12) are being denied this opportunity to play sports on their school teams, they are missing out on the building blocks of life lessons that sports teaches. The ramifications can be devastating and manifest themselves as lower self-esteem, higher obesity, lower higher education; which equates to higher unemployment.
The good news is that I am seeing more and more examples of disabled athletes and school administrators bucking the trend. Youth are running (or wheeling) on their high school track teams. Kids with cerebral palsy are playing on football teams and blind student athletes are running track or swimming with guides.
These administrators are showing the rest of America that there is nothing to fear by allowing a student athlete with a disability to compete on the local school team and that young people with disabilities add value to their local teams.
I am not oblivious, nor do I believe all these student athletes will become “superstars” and make Paralympic teams or compete in the Deaf Olympics, but at least there is an avenue for them to exude athletic expression and student athletes with disabilities will enjoy being included on their school teams and valued for what they bring to the team; rather than watching from sidelines.
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John Register is a Silver Medalist from the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney Australia. He serves on the board of AAPD and his passion is to connect the athletic world with the social advocacy in order to advance the awareness and the rights of people with disabilities.
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Comments
Submitted by 1 at 08:38 AM on July 9, 2013