SPARC water-ski day a big hit with new sponsor Amerigroup
They didn’t have to see it to believe it — just to appreciate it fully.
“We had phone conversations ahead of time and knew what it was all about, but words don’t do it justice,” Kelly Shearin of Amerigroup Tennessee’s Nashville office said last Saturday during the annual SPARC Water Sports Day at the First Lutheran Church Camp at Possum Creek.
Through its community-engaged foundation, Amerigroup is in its first year of partnership with Disabled Sports USA, which happens to have one Tennessee chapter: SPARC.
The acronym stands for Sports, Arts & Recreation of Chattanooga, and it provides adaptive physical activities for people with various disabilities. Its biggest event every year is the day of water skiing in Soddy-Daisy, and this year that meant 40 disabled skiers and a total crowd of 272, counting family members of participants, emergency personnel on standby and the multitude of cheerful volunteers.
The volunteers represented eight states, including Texas and Florida.
The three Amerigroup Tennessee representatives who attended on behalf of the new primary sponsor, including chief operating officer Kraig Dalton, seemed as amazed by the teamwork as they were thrilled by the smiles and excited yells of the skiers.
“A phenomenal job,” Dalton told the throng as they ended the lunch break.
In a separate conversation he and Shearin were similarly exuberant about SPARC’s work headed by Jerry and Debbie Hightower.
“Amerigroup wants to build better lives and better communities, and we happen to feel that way personally,” Dalton said, following in the footsteps of longtime sponsors such as DSUSA, Belk Stores, PepsiCo and the Osborne Foundation.
“We got a substantial grant from Amerigroup, and we really appreciate it,” Debbie Hightower said. “We were able to buy more equipment for all our programs, but in particular we got more skis.”
Most of the participants Saturday got three or four turns on the water.
The water sports also included rides on pontoon boats, kayaks, stand-up paddle boards and tubes for the skiers’ families — and some of the disabled. The event always was held on the third Saturday in July before this year, and the biggest turnout ever showed that the change was not a deterrent.
“It made no difference to me,” said William Toney of Ooltewah, who’s confined to a wheelchair by cerebral palsy. “I’ve been coming every year since 2005.”
He’s 23 now but still looks to Water Sports Day as one of his favorites of each year.
David Cunningham of Wildwood is another SPARC activities veteran. He happens to be also an Army veteran who is disabled but not disconnected, having won seven gold medals, four silvers and a bronze in the 2017 and 2018 National Veterans Wheelchair Games.
His visit Saturday to Possum Creek was his first time on water skis in 2019.
“I missed the nationals this year — I had a bug — and I spent almost two months in Florida, so getting back out here is great,” Cunningham said. “It’s definitely nice getting on the water.”
Chuck Alexander, 58, was one of the firsttime SPARC skiers, and the Huntsville resident quickly graduated from a glide with outriggers attached to his sit-ski to a ride without the extra stabilizers. He is paralyzed from the chest down as the result of a car wreck two and a half years ago.
Alexander knew of SPARC’s work before his accident, through friends, and he attended last year’s water-ski day as an observer. He has been doing adaptive cycling with SPARC this year, but skiing is an activity he had not done in “40 years or so.”
His first time on the water in decades “was a lot smoother than I expected — it was a great experience,” he said. But mostly he wanted to talk about the “amazing volunteers.”
“They help you all the way. They make things easy for you,” Alexander said.
One of the volunteers again was Scott Hersey, who for the second year in a row drove 10 hours from Tampa to be a side skier for the disabled. Now 35, he was living in Atlanta when he started helping at SPARC’s water day five years ago.
“I’ve worked in the marine industry for years, and I first water skied when I was 2,” Hersey said. “This is my world, and if I can help someone water ski who’s never done it before, or who used to but had an accident or something and hasn’t been able to and I can help them do it again, just point me in the direction.”