SPORTS 'N SPOKES

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Mighty Mite

Young athletes often learn much more through sports participation than they could even absorb from reading books or watching television.

As the parent of a young adult with a disability, I'm often asked how I did it. My response is that I just did. There isn't any magic formula or superhuman strength I acquired along the way. However, I do believe I've been assisted in a way I never expected—through adaptive sport. There are things my daughter has learned through sport that I could never have taught her, nor could she have learned by reading in a book or watching on television. Participation in adaptive sport has influenced my daughter, Kelsey Haase, to be the wonderful young woman she is today.

When people first meet Kelsey, they are charmed by her quiet, yet friendly, demeanor and get a kick out of her insights on life. She is an old soul and a petite presence in her 4-foot 5-inch body. Sometimes people feel sorry for her, looking at her in her wheelchair and thinking life hasn't been very fair. After all, spina bifida can be an overwhelming diagnosis, complete with neurological, orthopedic, urological, and learning difficulties. She has endured 19 surgeries, many of them to repair shunts, as well as several spine and orthopedic issues. It must be rough, right?

Then they get to know her, and any semblance of pity goes out the window.

Small but Sure

Kelsey is the national champion in the powerlifting 63kg weight class, a national recordholder, and a member of Team USA's powerlifting squad that is getting ready to compete in this year's International Wheelchair and Amputee Sport competition in Wales.

She has seen and done quite a bit in her relatively short life.

Now 18, Kelsey started out in sports as a tiny basketball player when she was 6. She was the youngest member of the team and used to cry whenever the buzzer went off to mark the end of the quarter. I still remember her first year when she would stop playing as the time clock counted down so she could plug her ears. Kelsey kept coming back, though, and I used to laugh at how she would play man-to-man defense against kids twice her size. She never let up and stayed on their wheel. Fortunately, she outgrew her fear of buzzers and became a great defender for the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association (glasa.org) basketball team.

By  the time Kelsey was 8, she had taken up track and field, participating in local competitions until she reached the qualifying events for the National Junior Disability Championships (NJDC). She started out in borrowed track chairs that had to be adapted for her lack of balance and inability to bend her legs. But she soon graduated to a custom-fitted and very pink racing chair, as well as her own field chair that gave her a competitive edge.

Kelsey has been a fixture on the national track and field scene for several years, recently competing in her sixth NJDC this summer. She gave up track last year after NJDC coaches talked to her about powerlifting. Kelsey realized she preferred to lift and throw heavy things rather than go around a track, which she found incredibly boring.

Check out the complete article in the November 2011 issue of S'NS.

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