If it’s a good thing to be passionate about your senior project, then Eli Ettinger was definitely on the right track when he embarked on the project required for his undergraduate degree in family and human services last year.
In 2008, Ettinger started the adaptive sports club with the help of former U.S. Paralympic track coach Kevin Hansen.
“There were no social inclusion opportunity for students with disabilities,” Ettinger said. “I’ve always felt that a student’s experiences outside the classroom are just as important as those inside the classroom.”
Ettinger said that he tries to make every school he attends a better place for students
with disabilities.
“Working towards that goal has been really fulfilling,” he said.
Now in its second full year of operation, the adaptive sports club allows disabled student-athletes an opportunity to train and compete with other talented athletes.
Hansen had been Ettinger’s personal track coach for ten years, and the two were both motivated to create a strong adaptive sports program at the University.
“The goal is to have the same interscholastic sports experience that is available to other students,” explains Hansen. “For the first 15 to 20 years of my career, I coached mainly elite and Paralympic athletes, and the last 10 years I’ve just been coaching high school athletes. I just got tired of sending high school athletes to the University of Arizona or the University of Illinois.”
The University of Arizona has a particularly strong adaptive sports program, and is even able to offer scholarships to its participants.
“My goal is that one day the U of O will reach towards those standards,” said Ettinger.
Hansen said that about a dozen schools across the country have adaptive sports programs, though he hopes to see that number rise. He said that within 10 years, disabled athletes will be able to compete at NCAA levels.
“The goal is to get an adaptive sports club, and hopefully a wheelchair track and field team at every Pac-10 school,” Hansen said.
By Hansen’s estimate, high school adaptive sports programs exist in at least 25 states, and that number has been growing rapidly since 2003.
Ettinger has been a part of the history of adaptive sports here in the state of Oregon. In 2002, he was part of the first group of physically disabled athletes to race at the Oregon state high school meet at Hayward Field.
He said that competing in front of an energized crowd at Hayward Field was a great experience.
“It’s really a special place with all the history around it,” he said.
Hansen said that athletes from the University of Arizona and possibly the University of Illinois will be in Eugene for the Oregon Relays in the spring, and he hopes to have enough participation to hold a meet between the three schools.
“It would be fun to see some of the kids from Oregon get to come in and compete in front of their parents — even though they’re not going to be wearing green and yellow,” he said of the kids from Arizona and Illinois.
There have been wheelchair events at the Oregon Relays in previous years, however, Hansen said that athletes were competing independently, and not for their schools.
The adaptive sports club is not solely a track and field team, however. One of the original members of the club is grad student Molly Rogers, a wheelchair tennis player ranked No. 15 nationally by the USTA.
The other two members of the club, Matt Howard and Ming Canaday, are also track athletes. But Ettinger wants to focus on expanding the club to include wheelchair basketball as well as other sports.
One of the biggest challenges the club has faced is recruitment. Ettinger said he hopes awareness about the club will lead to more and more athletes joining.
“If somebody just wants to have an opportunity to play tennis two or three times a week, or to go downhill skiing, we want to make sure that those opportunities are available,” Hansen said.
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New club sport puts Ducks in rare air
Daily Emerald
November 11, 2009