New wheelchair racing team helping kids in Olympic City get into adaptive sports
Michael Logerwell
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) – Olympic City, USA is living up to its name, building up the next generation of adaptive athletes, and it’s all happening on Saturday mornings at Rampart High School.
“You can just call me coach.” Amanda McGrory is a 7-time Paralympian in track and field, but now she has a new title: coach.
Despite not being from Colorado Springs, but spending a lot of time here, Coach McGrory knows what the ‘Olympic City’ title means. Despite that, she noticed there was no easy way for kids to get into adaptive sports.
“As the home of the Olympic and Paralympic teams, there are a ton of opportunities for really high-level athletes, but not as much for athletes just getting started,” McGrory said.
To remedy that, she started the Eagle Blitz Wheelchair Racing Team. It’s part of a Colorado non-profit called Adaptive Sports for All. It invites young athletes to challenge themselves and make new friends.
The team got off the ground with training in April; since then, kids have been getting together every week at Rampart High School to train.
Parents of athletes say it’s already making a positive difference in their children’s lives.
“It’s so important for him to be able to, um, to have an outlet and to have to be around other people who use wheelchairs, and he feels very normal, and if he’s around some amazing role models as adults,” Chris Muller, an Eagle Blitz parent, said.
Now, Muller tells us his son wants to grow up to be a Paralympic athlete, just like his coach.
If you’d like to learn more, they meet every Saturday at Rampart High School at 9 am and are always looking for new members of the team.