UH tennis team aces its adaptive program
Athletes overcome ‘biggest obstacle’ with competitions
When Carlos Salinas was injured in a single-car accident 11 years ago, he thought he would never be able to play sports again.
“Your mind is the biggest obstacle,” said Salinas. “Don’t think that you can’t do things.”
That point has been underscored for the 31-year-old, who now is studying supply chain logistics at the University of Houston.
Salinas was one of 28 mostly male players from Texas and Louisiana who use wheelchairs whizzing through the courts at the Memorial Tennis Center over the weekend for UH’s adaptive tennis program’s second annual tournament.
Tennis, the newest addition to UH’s adaptive sports program, has allowed individual players across a wide range of disabilities and experience levels to compete and practice on their terms and at their own skill level. As a result, they can reap the emotional benefits of sports and even compete against able bodied players.
“It’s OK to be inspired by this, but these athletes aren’t here to inspire you,” said Michael Cottingham, the director of University of Houston’s Adaptive Athletics program. “They’re here to compete and win.”
As someone who has both used a wheelchair and competed in tennis since childhood, Cottingham said the biggest value of sports is its ability to provide an
alternative means of therapy for the average person who sustains a spinal cord injury. Typically, he said, that is a young male between 15 and 25.
“That 15-to-25-yearold guy who got injured in construction is not going to be down for talking about their feelings in group therapy,” said Cottingham.
“But through sports,” he said, “for them it becomes, ‘Hey, how did you start working, how did you get a job, how did you start dating and driving again?’” Though the program is looking to host an International Tennis Federation sponsored tournament in the next two years, Samantha Kwan, a sociology professor and the volunteer director of the adaptive tennis program at UH, said the lack of funds and staff is becoming a barrier.
Currently, the University of Houston provides the program only with facilities in the form of the student and faculty tennis courts on campus to practice, leaving the Kwan and Cottingham to fund the program through grant writing, donations and sponsorships. They said they don’t get any money from UH.
“I haven’t felt great about our fundraising because I feel like we could get more,” said Kwan, who works with the adaptive sports program to create flyers and packets that they send out to potential donors. “For every 50 packets we send out, we get maybe $100 back.”
Currently, the biggest monetary obstacle for the organization has been acquiring the specialised wheelchairs that allow players to speedily navigate the courts. According to Kwan, these wheelchairs often cost upward of $4,000, and though the program gets by through borrowing chairs from a adaptive sports program on West Gray Road, they still need at least ten more chairs to run a stable program.
“That’s what I would need so that when someone new comes out to a clinic, we’re not having to scramble so that they can participate,” said Kwan.
Kwan’s own availability has become an obstacle too, she said, having to find time to run the program alongside her full time job as an associate sociology professor. She and Cottingham said that even having two part time employees to coach and fund raise would be an immense help to the program.
“I think we do amazing work with really limited resources,” said Cottingham. “We change lives with this program, and it’s important that we take things to the next level.”