Breaking boundaries: Adaptive sports signal a new era for excellence and inclusion
Meet two athletes who break down barriers and build a culture of acceptance in sports.
After Femita Ayanbeku lost her right leg in a car accident at 11 years old, she thought sports weren’t going to be part of her life. Then, when she was 23, her prosthetist mentioned there would be a running clinic in town, and asked her if she wanted to get fitted for a running blade, which is a curved prosthetic limb amputee runners use.
At the clinic in Boston, Ayanbeku fell in love with running. “When I walk, I think about every step I take,” she says. “But when I’m running, I just feel free.”
Ayanbeku is now a two-time Paralympic sprinter — having competed in Rio in
2016 and Tokyo in 2020 — and sits on the board of directors for The Born to Run Foundation, which provides specialized prosthetics to young adults and children.
Up to one in four adults in the United States have a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Adaptive sports are sports modified or created to accommodate individuals with disabilities. At any level, they’re beneficial for participants’ physical, mental, and social health. However, there are often barriers to participation, according to a study from the Global Sport Institute, including a lack of information, expensive equipment, and long travel times to the nearest program.
“When you don’t have access to those things, it completely cuts out a part of your life that you think you can’t have,” Ayanbeku says. “It takes [people away from things] that they don’t even know that they’re capable of. If I never got that blade, I would have never known that I had this potential to be who I am today.”
Getting back in the game
When Vaughn Pfeffer first got invited to a game of pickup wheelchair basketball, he was nervous that he wouldn’t love it the way he had loved playing traditional sports before an aortic dissection and spinal cord stroke in 2021 paralyzed him from the waist down. But when he got to the court he was surprised by the level of competition, physicality, and enjoyment he found.
“I finally felt like I was able to excel in something sports-related again,” Pfeffer says. “It brought a sense of normalcy. It brought camaraderie. It brought teamwork. It brought some trash talk. It brought everything that I needed.”
From there, Pfeffer’s strong throwing arm earned him a position as quarterback for the New England Patriots wheelchair football team.
Pfeffer encourages anyone to give adaptive sports a try. “Nobody judges. Everyone appreciates the fact that you show up. Everyone has done it, everyone has shown up by themselves,” he says. “Don’t be afraid to dive in, and we’ll take care of you.”