Ability First Sports

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Adaptive Club

Ability First Sports is a wheelchair sports program designed to provide instructional & recreational sports opportunities to youth with physical disabilities.

Ability First Sports began in 1985 at California State University, Chico through the Physical Education Department to educate and train physical education professionals to proactively include adapted sports and recreation in schools. As a leader in the industry, Ability First emerged as an annual summer youth sports camp to develop recreational and athletic opportunities for youth with physical disabilities. Since then, Ability First Sports has provided sports instruction and training to over 1,000 wheelchair athletes in the Western U.S. who can benefit from sports instruction to develop an active and healthy lifestyle.

After over 30 years of coaching youth in adapted sports, Ability First Sports is positioned as a regional leader for adapted sports summer camp experiences where youth learn to develop an active lifestyle through sports instruction and coaching. Over the next few years, Ability First Sports is developing a destination adapted sports campus to bring wheelchair athletes to year-round experiences to develop independence, endurance, strength and leadership in their communities for health & wellness. Ability FIrst continues to train families to advocate for equal particpation and inclusion in sports and recreation.

Activities

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Running/Wheelchair Racing

Since the first Paralympic Games in Rome in 1960, swimming has been one of the Games’ main sports. The thrill of competition aside, swimming offers many benefits including strengthening the cardiovascular systems and the major muscle groups of both the upper and lower body. It also develops flexibility in the muscles and joints as…

The people you meet through tennis are friendly, happy, optimistic and outgoing, They just want to have a good time and want others to have a good time. – Steve Kappes, Director of the San Diego Wounded Warrior Tennis Program and Director of Military Outreach for the San Diego District Tennis Association All About…

Water Skiing 101 Ride the Wake! There is nothing like spending a warm summer day by the water. But water-skiers will tell you that even better is a day spent water skiing along on the surface of the water with the wind in their hair. Don’t think because you have a disability that you can’t…

Trying to describe the sport of wheelchair rugby may be difficult. You just have to see it. Better yet, you just have to play it. “There really isn’t an able-bodied counterpart,” according to Katie Joly, program manager at the Gaylord Hospital Sports Association, a Move United member organization based in Connecticut. “It is a mixture…

Track and Field is the largest Olympic and Paralympic sport in terms of the number of athletes and number of classifications and categories. In addition to the races that take place on the track, there are a number of competitions that take place on the field inside the track. In particular, there are throwing and…