Disability & Sports Blog - Kashmira Sidhwa

                                             Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Do you have a family or friend that wants to feel included and play on a local sports team but cannot find one that accepts individuals with a hearing or visual impairment? Well, you found the right place! A lot of sports only account for physical disabilities such as amputees, paralyzed people, and more. There are tons of sports that, with a hearing or visual impairment, you cannot, or it is very difficult, to participate in. In the Paralympics, there are several sports that are able to be played by these types of individuals, such as goalball, rowing, and swimming for visual impairments and track events for those with hearing impairments. There are several ways that these sports make it easier and more accessible for the athletes to feel comfortable and safe while participating in the sport. For example, people with hearing impairments who compete in track events are not able to hear the gun fire that marks

~Special Olympics Mission~ "The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community." (Special Olympics, 2023) Eunice Kennedy Shriver was the founder of Camp Shriver, a place with people with intellectual disabilities could feel included and participate in sports/activities, in the early 1960s at her Maryland farm, Timberlawn. Soon, everyone including the young camp counselors realized that these children were not difficult nor unteachable, but all they wanted to do was simply have fun (Special Olympics). Individuals with disabilities were tremendously being mistreated during the 1960s, being sent to institutions a

BRING HOME THE GOLD! What is one of the main reasons athletes go out for the Olympic or Paralympic Games? For their country. They want to be able to represent their home country and bring home the gold medal to them. Why represent another country that you are not from when you can show off where you are from and display pride in your homeland! The International Paralympic Committee made the executive decision in March of 2022 that athletes participating in the Paralympic Games who were from Russia or Belarus were not able to represent their own countries, but rather represent the Paralympic flag and the Paralympic anthem, to compete as neutral athletes/support personnel in the Games. In addition, they are also not allowed to have their country displayed anywhere on their attire nor, if and when, they win medals will those medals be counted towards their country but rather towards them as an individual (IPC Make Decisions Regarding RPC and NPC Belarus, 2022). Later in November of 2022,

Classification All sports of the Paralympics work very hard against individuals with similar disabilities as themselves to play in the games, but, everyone has a different disability and it affects them in a different way; therefore, they would have to get classified in order to be in the correct sport class that meets their level of disability. The International Paralympic Committee explains classification and how "... it determines which athletes are eligible to compete in a sport and how athletes are grouped together for competition. In Para sports, athletes are grouped by the degree of activity limitation resulting from the impairment" (International Paralympic Committee). The committee compares Paralympic classification to general classifications which uses gender, weight, and age to classify athletes into groups. Athletes, regardless of the level of disability they have, should be allowed to be evaluated in order to be classified for every sport. I think that classifica

What is cheating? Merriam-Webster's Dictionary describes "cheating" as "to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud" (Merriam-Webster). But why? Why do people do this? Some people may argue that the act of cheating, whether it is on an exam, in a game, or in a sport, can get you ahead and make you the winner. Cheating is something that people do to get ahead of others and it puts them at an advantage compared to everyone else, until they get caught.  Watching the video, "The Greatest Paralympic Scandal of All Time" made by Austin McConnell really had me in shock and I was flabbergasted at how there are actual people who would commit an act of cheating, especially in the Paralympic Games. In the summer of 2000, the Paralympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia and to say there was cheating is an understatement.  Spain's  Men's Basketball Intellectual Disability team was the source of this scandal. The team consisted of 12 pl

Both the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games only come around every four years, about two weeks after the Olympic Games conclude. Usually, commercials on television start advertising for both Games at the end of June and the beginning of July in the year that they are being held for the Summer, and in January/February for the Winter. AdImpact mentions, "...it's clear that the closer we get to the Opening Ceremony in Tokyo, the more brands are mentioning the contest" (AdImpact, 2021). Although this talks about the Olympics, as opposed to the Paralympics, it still shows that the majority of advertisements for the Games occur closer to when they begin, and not throughout the whole year. The graph below clearly represents this statistic (for the Summer Games) on how marketing increased in May, which was closer to the start of the Summer Games (AdImpact, 2021). More information on the graph above can be found here:  AdImpact Graph Personally, I believe that the media does not h