No limits for kids at Camp Adventure
Adaptive sports offer fun and friendship
They play basketball and tennis, climb a rock wall, make volcanoes, and do arts and crafts — the kinds of things that kids normally do at summer camp.
It doesn’t matter that many of these kids are in wheelchairs or are somehow differentlyabled. For a week each summer, they simply get to be kids at the Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation’s Camp Adventure. The camp, being held at La Cueva High School, has about 40 kids age 6-12 this week and will host another 25, age 13-19, next week, said Jeff Hoehn, executive director of the Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation.
“This is the 16th year we’ve held the camp, and out of the camp a series of adaptive sports and recreational programs has developed and are provided year round,” including a wheelchair basketball team, a hand cycling team, and adaptive dance, yoga and swimming programs.
“We want these kids to have every opportunity to find a sport that they love,” Hoehn said.
Prem Martin, 12, who is going into the seventh grade at Jefferson Middle School, has attended the camp for several summers. Prem, who has a condition that prevents him from being able to straighten his arms or legs, said he enjoys wheelchair basketball, “but I really like wheelchair tennis.”
The camp “is pretty much the highlight of my summer,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to meet people who are in the same situation I’m in and who understand what I’m going through.”
Gabriel Delgado of El Paso certainly understands. He has osteogenesis imperfecta, a disease makes his bones brittle and subject to breaking easily. The first-time camper is 7 years old, but is about the size of a 2-year-old, said his mother, Nicole Sherred-Delgado.
“He gets to see other kids of small stature who are differentlyabled and he’s making friends.”
And because all the activities are adaptive, “even kids who can’t do things in the traditional manner find that everything is still open to them.”
A special guest on Wednesday was international wheelchair racer Brad Ray. Born with spina bifida, Ray, 48, has used a wheelchair his entire life, but didn’t get into racing until he was 36.
A former manager for a big box home supply store in Albuquerque, Ray said he was unhappy and unhealthy. “I started training for marathons and ended up becoming a wheelchair racer.”
Today, he lives in Loveland, Colo., raises Tibetian mastiffs and alpacas, and regularly talks to kids with disabilities, hoping to inspire them, as well as educate their parents with the message to “not limit their kids.”