When we discussed disability in class last Thursday, I
realized that I did not know much about any great athletes with disabilities.
So I decided to look it up and found an interesting website (http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Sports/Galleries/5-Inspiring-Athletes-Who-Overcame-Disabilities.aspx?p=4)
that featured some new athletes that we hadn’t talked about.
Jason Lester has been a participant in both Ironman and
Ultraman competitions, although he does not have full control of his arm. When he was 12, he was in a car accident that
left his right arm paralyzed. All of the
class examples were about athletes who were missing a body part and most likely
had a prosthetic.
I found Lester to be more interesting because he still has
all of his body parts. So instead of dealing with not having an arm, he must
deal with having dead weight. He needs to be even stronger than an athlete missing
an arm to overcome the extra weight of an arm that provides no help.
I think that my sports experience would have been extremely
different if I had a disability. The
main sport I played growing up throughout high school was soccer, which
involves all parts of the body similar to football or hockey. Those sports have rare occurrences of
athletes with a disability being involved.
Which makes sense to me because of a disability being even harder to
overcome in those sports.
I think another major difference in my involvement in sports
is that I tried every sport growing up for at least one season. I believe that if I would have had a
disability, I would have chosen a sport and stuck with it. I would have been concerned with the extra
challenges I had to overcome and trying my hardest to be the best athlete on
the team. I do not think I would have
let those challenges stop me however, and I know I still would have wanted to
be a part of athletics.
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