The NCAA's nonsensical eligibility guidelines left Paralympic medal contender Hunter Woodhall with only one logical choice: turn pro.
Category: Paralympics
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Road to Tokyo: Brian Bell Chases His Hoop Dreams
Although he had the misfortune to lose his right leg in a childhood accident, Brian Bell had the good luck to grow up in the adaptive sports hotbed of Birmingham, Alabama. Blessed with first-rate coaching, equipment, and sponsorship support from an early age, Bell blossomed into one of the nation’s most sought-after wheelchair basketball recruits...
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Road to Tokyo: Ezra Frech Feels the Love
He won’t turn 16 until May, but Ezra Frech already has a higher profile than most Paralympic athletes. As the co-founder of Angel City Sports, Frech (rhymes with “tech”) has helped open doors to athletic opportunity for thousands of people with limb difference and other disabilities. After grabbing silver medals in the long jump and...
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Road to Tokyo: Nichole Millage Keeps the Ball Flying
Amputee volleyball player Nichole Millage already has a Paralympic gold and two silvers. So why is she putting herself through the wringer for a shot at one last medal?
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Road to Tokyo: Melissa Stockwell Stays the Course
Melissa Stockwell was supposed to be six months into retirement from athletics by now, focused on family and business and (ideally) basking in the glow of a Tokyo gold medal. When the 2020 Games were pushed back by a year due to COVID, she briefly entertained the idea of sticking with Plan A—retiring on schedule,...
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Road to Tokyo: Hunter Woodhall Gets Back to Business
When COVID put the Paralympics on hold, amputee athlete Hunter Woodhall didn’t need long to figure out how to rechannel his energy. He launched a new company. And he didn’t worry about the stuff he couldn’t control.
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Will the 2021 Paralympics Be Cancelled?
Amputee athletes and other Paralympians are supposed to start competing on August 24. Will COVID allow the Games to go forward?
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Road to Tokyo: 5 Amputee Paralympians on the Rise
Meet five amputee athletes who hope not only to make their Paralympic debuts in Tokyo later this year, but to win medals there.
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Move United Enlarges the Tent for Adaptive Sports
When Adaptive Sports USA and Disabled Sports USA merged earlier this year to form Move United, the new entity instantly became the nation’s largest adaptive sports network. Now it’s setting the stage for further growth by creating a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Leadership Team. Designed to attract new participants from low-income populations and...
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Pedaling Through the Pandemic
Congrats to the team of paratriathletes who kicked off National Triathlon Week by cycling across Colorado’s deserts, peaks and plains to raise $21,000+ (and counting) for people who’ve taken a hit in the pocketbook because of the pandemic.
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Proud to Be a Paralympian
Below-knee amputee Nichole Millage has won a gold medal and two silvers in her three previous trips to the Paralympics. The 2021 Tokyo Games will be her last hurrah.
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Worthy Endeavors
Despite the virtual format for the 2020 Endeavor Games, the jitters Anthony Quinn felt before he ran his race were very real.
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Tokyo 2021: Allan Armstrong Soldiers On
SFC Allan Armstrong resumed running just six months after he lost his leg in a motorcycle accident in 2013. He returned to active military duty a few months after that, took up paratriathlon in 2015, and won his first U.S. championship in less than two years.
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Jumping for June
Given that most pro and amateur athletes remain sidelined by the pandemic, June is shaping up as a surprisingly active month on the adaptive sports calendar.
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Inside Paralympians’ Quest for Equality
After finally breaking through to win Paralympic gold in 2016, Katie Holloway was beyond stoked. She and her teammates on the U.S. women’s sitting volleyball team had ended eight years of frustration and finally topped their arch rivals from China, to whom they’d lost the Paralympic championship match in both 2008 and 2012.
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Parasports Pioneers Join Forces
If this week's historic merger between Disabled Sports USA (DSUSA) and Adaptive Sports USA (ASUSA) caught you by surprise, you’re not alone. It kind of snuck up on the two organizations themselves, who will operate jointly from now on as Move United.
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Tokyo 2021: Lacey Henderson Looks Ahead
When we spoke to Lacey Henderson back on March 19, the Paralympics were still supposedly going to be held on schedule in August 2020. She no longer had a place to train, though—her regular training facility had closed a few days earlier—and all the spring qualifying meets had been called off.
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Adaptive Spirit Adapts
It doesn’t seem like very long ago that we were talking up the 25th anniversary of Adaptive Spirit—and, in fact, it wasn’t long ago at all. But everything has changed since then, and Adaptive Spirit has gone the way of every other gathering of more than 10 people. Given that this annual fundraiser accounts for...
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Coronavirus: What Amputees Know
“Amputees don’t focus on what they don’t have,” says Patrick Quinn. “They work with what they do have, and they find ways to maximize it.”
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World Para Surfing Championship: Meet the Winners
The sports world wasn’t entirely dormant over the weekend, as the World Para Surfing Championship proceeded to its conclusion on Saturday. The United States earned silver in the team competition (Spain took the gold), and several amputees (including Americans Colin Cook and Liv Stone) won individual gold medals—fittingly so, since the Association of Amputee Surfers...
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Road to Tokyo: NCAA Indoor Track Championships
Our latest conversation with Hunter Woodhall comes on the eve of the NCAA Indoor Track and Field National Championships.
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Road to Tokyo: Hunter Woodhall’s New Legs
Hunter Woodhall is one of the biggest stars and most recognizable faces on the US Paralympics team. We’ll be talking to Hunter regularly throughout 2020 as he prepares for his second Paralympic Games and pursues his first gold medal(s) in track and field. This conversation took place in late February, after Hunter wrapped up a long weekend with prosthetist Francois Van Der Watt.
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Adaptive Spirit: 25 Years of Support for the Paralympics
A quarter-century is an impressive run for any fundraiser, but Adaptive Spirit merits an extra tip of the cap: It literally saved the US Paralympic Ski Team from oblivion back in the mid-1990s. In the years since, Adaptive Spirit has helped Team USA roll up more Winter Paralympic medals than any other nation.
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1st Person: My First 10K as an Amputee
We got a lot of positive feedback last month on Angie Heuser’s first-person story about learning to surf. So we asked her if we could share another episode from her life — this time about the trials of her first 10K race post-amputation. Both articles come from her blog, Stepping Out in Faith. Thanks, Angie,...
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Second Edition of The Paralympian Now Available
The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has released the final 2018 edition of its magazine The Paralympian, which reflects on a busy year of World Championships and looks ahead to a new Paralympic Winter Games cycle. Download an online copy at http://paralympics.uberflip.com/i/1059743-the-paralympian-dec-2018. Also, to watch videos and subscribe to ParalympicSport.TV, visit www.youtube.com/ParalympicSportTV.
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Retired Soldiers Benefit From Wheelchair Rugby
If you have never witnessed wheelchair rugby in person, you should make it a point to do so. The sound of the wheelchairs rushing up and down the court and the metal-on-metal collision of those same wheelchairs is an experience in and of itself. The athletes maneuver their chairs with grace, finesse, and ferocity all...