Designed to bridge the gap between intramural and intercollegiate sports, the EMU’s Club Sports program gives University students nearly 50 athletic options, including skydiving, surfing, jiu jitsu, Ultimate Frisbee and wakeboarding.
Next year, a few more will be added to the list with the inauguration of Adaptive Club Sports, which includes wheelchair racing, tennis and basketball, and hand cycling.
For his senior project in the family and human services department, Eli Ettinger – who uses a wheelchair because of spina bifida, a birth defect where the spine fails to close properly during development – has spent the past year working to get ACS off the ground.

“It has never been done before,” Ettinger said. “Until now, there was no social outlet for students with disabilities. (The University’s Disability Services) is wonderful but not enough. Students with disabilities need to have the same opportunities as everybody else.”
A competitive wheelchair racer, Ettinger was the only physically disabled athlete to graduate from Sunset High School in Beaverton and once missed qualifying for the Paralympics by a second and a half.
His project started with researching other schools with similar programs – such as the University of Arizona, which has eight teams through its Disability Resource Center – and surveying students to see which sports they’d like to see. He also worked closely with Andy Fernandez of the Hilyard Community Center’s adaptive recreation program and Kevin Hansen, president of World Wheelchair Sports, a local organization with a mission to promote physical fitness as essential for everyone.
A quadriplegic as a result of a 1975 snow skiing accident, Hansen has been coaching Ettinger since he was a freshman in high school. Hansen happened to meet Ettinger’s mother in an airport while he was returning from coaching at the 1996 Summer Paralympics in Atlanta.
“People who are alter-abled are as important and part of the community as the new baseball team,” Hansen said. “There’s not a lot of opportunity for people who use wheelchairs or have a disability to take part in intramural or club sports or other sanctioned NCAA sports. They should have the opportunity to have recreational sports or competitive outlets just like everybody else on campus.”
Ettinger said ACS will be open not only to students with physical disabilities, but also those with “hidden disabilities,” such as dyslexia or autism as well, as their allies.
“The allies without any disabilities would get a chance to see what it’s like to compete and use a wheelchair, so it’d open their eyes,” he said. “Even though people have disabilities, we can still be active and athletic.”
Both Ettinger and Hansen hope to inspire other schools to follow suit.
“It’s not only going to make the University more accessible to everyone,” Hansen said. “It’s going to make the whole Pac-10 Conference more accessible to everyone.”
Hansen wrote a grant proposal that Ettinger submitted to Nike, which was successful. Nike donated $14,000 to purchase hand cycles and six sports chairs.
When Ettinger presented his proposal for ACS to the Club Sports Executive Committee members on May 7, “they were blown away that I was able to get 14 grand from Nike,” he said.
University junior Jeff Gibb, one of the five executive committee members, said the money from Nike, as well as Ettinger’s decision to spend five more terms at the University as a graduate student, were factors in the committee’s decision to approve ACS.
“He totally just blew us away with his presentation and how organized he was; he just made the decision really easy on us,” Gibb said. “We want to start clubs that will be sustainable in future years. We want to start clubs that have events around here they can compete in. As an executive committee, we just want to see good leadership.”
Ettinger said, “I was extremely happy and proud all the hard work I did paid off. But at the same time, I made the pitch and now I have to produce. So in a way, the hard work is just beginning.”
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