Changing the Game: Building the West Coast's First Comprehensive Adaptive Recreation Program

INTRODUCTION

Last school year, the Campus Sustainability Fund (CSF) graciously provided the Intramurals Program with the absolutely integral funding needed to launch their wheelchair basketball program. With CSF’s support, Intramurals has been able to purchase twelve state-of-the-art sport wheelchairs and is planning on launching its inaugural wheelchair basketball program this winter.

After laying the required groundwork for inclusion in one of our biggest programs with Intramurals, UW Recreation is now looking to take the next step towards ensuring department-wide sustainability of DEI practices with the addition of a brand new staff position: the Adaptive Recreation Coordinator.

UW Recreation is seeking to secure student staff funding support for the first step towards building a cohesive and comprehensive new branch of the department entirely: Adaptive Recreation. 

Based on conversations with the standard-bearers in adaptive athletics across the country (University of Michigan, UC Berkeley, Alabama, Eastern Washington, UW alum and Director of Wheelchair Tennis for USTA Jason Harnett, Rainier Adaptive Sports, Northwest Blind Athletes Association and more), UW Recreation is looking to establish a sustainable business model to grow slowly but steadily towards our long term goal of building out both grassroots programming but also competitive, intercollegiate athletics teams and paralympians. 

With CSF’s support, the University of Washington can become THE collegiate adaptive recreation destination in the Pacific Northwest, beating out Oregon (not to mention WSU) in the race towards launching the country’s FIRST Division I, Big 10 west coast adaptive athletics program.

BACKGROUND

Over the years, UW Recreation has had to employ a patchwork approach towards adaptive recreation, often relying very heavily on individual managers who can cycle in and out to push and find funding for any new additions to their specific program areas. Due to budgetary restrictions, the department as a whole has not been capable of any sort of unified, vision-driven approach to adaptive recreation.

Instead, you’ll see programs like Intramurals offer wheelchair basketball, UWild buy adaptive kayaking equipment, Fitness & Wellness purchase new gym equipment, or the Crags Climbing Center provide adaptive climbing harnesses and belaying. While we are very proud of our current adaptive offerings, as they are the most we have had in the history of our department, we recognize that NOW is the time to continue our momentum towards laying the groundwork for creating the new Adaptive Recreation branch that brings everything together.

SUMMARY

In this section, you’ll see us outline the short term, medium term and long term goals, complete with year-by-year breakdowns of our business plan and growth model. 

While our current LOI is only asking for funding assistance for our short term vision (next school year), we feel it is important to demonstrate how CSF’s support now is absolutely vital for our first steps in achieving our strategic goals. Without it, we cannot move forward.

• Short term vision (SY26-27)
  • Utilizing the newly created Adaptive Recreation Coordinator* to establish an entirely new program under the Recreation umbrella: Adaptive Recreation
  • A dedicated part-time, student staff member as the Adaptive Recreation Coordinator who is responsible for presenting a unified adaptive recreation experience for patrons of all abilities across all our spaces (Intramurals, Fitness & Wellness, Open Rec, Rec Clubs, UWild Outdoor Adventures, Gear Garage, Crags Climbing Gym). Certified through AdaptX, industry leader in inclusive and adaptive fitness. Responsible for training the trainer model for all our staff.
  • Would put on an adaptive event a month in collaboration with each individual program area and relevant departments, RSOs, sponsors and partners to promote our new offerings, building out a regular community of new patrons who we’ve never been able to target cohesively and inclusively before.

*We will go into more financial details in our budget breakdown section, but we are asking CSF to help fund hours for both our Adaptive Recreation Coordinator (part-time, student staffer) as well as programming hours for existing student staff within each individual program area.

• Medium term vision (SY27-28)
  • Building on the success of the Adaptive Recreation Coordinator and the establishing of our regular patrons, we would look to add an entirely new layer and launch competitive adaptive Rec Clubs, beginning with wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis.
    • We have used a very similar model with our Sport Skills Classes, where our Rec Clubs officers help teach beginner tennis or intermediate judo, for example, then funnel the more advanced and competitive players from those classes into their clubs.
  • Jason Harnett, Director of Wheelchair Tennis at USTA and Head Coach of Team USA Wheelchair Tennis, is a UW alum and former Husky tennis player. Jason is guiding us towards the successful launch of an intercollegiate wheelchair tennis team.
  • Erik Robeznieks from University of Michigan’s Adaptive Sports & Fitness Department is advising us on building out our intercollegiate wheelchair basketball program.
  • Maintain Adaptive Recreation Coordinator position, add new hires of coaches for competitive adaptive Rec Clubs.
  • Secure additional funding through donors and sponsors after success of SY26-27.
  • Add new adaptive recreation offerings, including Goalball and Beep Ball.

• Long term vision (SY28-29 and beyond)
  • After capturing success through our competitive adaptive Rec Clubs (wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis), we would add wheelchair track & field and wheelchair rugby to launch an entirely new department: Adaptive Recreation
  • Maintain Adaptive Recreation Coordinator and coaching positions, add full-time, professional staff Associate Director of Adaptive Recreation position.
  • All housed under the Associate Director of Adaptive Recreation, we would provide recreational and competitive adaptive programs.
  • Continue to secure additional funding
  • Build upon the success of competitive club teams in SY27-28 and begin to recruit elite adaptive athletes and send them to regional, national and international competitions.
  • Identify, recruit and develop our first in-house trained Paralympian, adding to the storied successes of UW athletes in the Olympics across the generations.

SUSTAINABLE IMPACT

Individuals are much more likely to come to the IMA if they know there is someone whose sole job it is to take care of them and their personalized, unique needs + unified offerings across all program areas that they are welcome in ANY of our spaces.

Now that we’ve built the infrastructure, we need to reliably staff it and market it effectively to ensure its sustainability. 

Budget cuts have severely impacted Recreation, just like most departments on campus. We are under pressure from higher up to stick to what we know works, aka what brings in revenue. As with all adaptive offerings, patrons would be able to participate 100% free of charge. This means that we need help supporting our staffing costs that we would normally be able to cover by charging participants.

LEADERSHIP & STUDENT INVOLVEMENT

As with any Recreation program, our newly established Adaptive Recreation arm will be led by our committed student staff. UW Recreation boasts upwards of 300+ student staff each year across the department. However, we need help sustainably providing these dedicated student staff hours to focus on adaptive recreation. 

As a reminder from our last CSF grant submission, for wheelchair basketball we have worked in close collaboration with various groups across campus, including Student Disability Commission (SDC), Disability Services Office (DSO), ASUW, as well as surveying 30,000+ UW students, faculty and staff who identified adaptive recreational offerings as a top priority.

Additionally, the world of adaptive sports is a unique one in the fact that many people or groups one would immediately think of as a potential competitor is, in all actuality, an enthusiastic collaborator. We are wildly lucky to benefit from the experts in the adaptive recreation world all genuinely wanting us to succeed and providing a blueprint for us to do so. 

We are eternally grateful for the support from the University of Michigan’s Adaptive Sports & Fitness Department (whose founder, the nationally respected Dr. O, was the one who first planted the wheelchair basketball seed in our brains during his time as a consultant at UW back in 2022/23), our partners at Rainier Adaptive Sports (whose Executive Director & CEO Charlie Katica, a PLU Faculty Athletics Rep and former University of Alabama wheelchair basketball coach, is volunteering to lead our all staff training in the sport), and Jason Harnett (UW tennis alum and current United States Tennis Association (USTA) Director of Wheelchair Tennis + Team USA Head Coach, who is volunteering to guide us through the launch of our own program). 

Basically, everyone we’ve talked to so far has been unbelievably excited that one of the top universities in the country is FINALLY getting an adaptive recreation program and are willing to do whatever they can to help us realize this vision. This includes sharing resources such as new grants we had not yet heard of, potentially splitting funding for trips to national competitions such as HoopFest™, connecting us with viable sponsors and sharing strategy on what has worked for them in the past that we can duplicate.

EDUCATION, OUTREACH & BEHAVIOR CHANGE

In speaking with para-athlete Nick Weiss, former University of Illinois wheelchair basketball star who now coaches at Rainier Adaptive Sports, we were presented with the following anecdote that vividly illustrates our long term goals of education, outreach and behavior change.

Born and raised in Seattle, Nick wanted nothing more than to be a Dawg like his entire family before him. Unfortunately, the lack of adaptive sports and recreation on UW’s campus meant there was no community here for him. Instead, Nick was recruited to play wheelchair basketball at the University of Illinois and had to leave his entire family for a chance at a normal collegiate experience for a para-athlete. 

You could hear the emotion in his voice and see his eyes start to shine when Nick talked about the possibility of helping start that adaptive recreation community here at UW that he desired so badly. He has current high school athletes who are facing the same decision as he did all those years ago- stay at home, but without the essential outlet of adaptive recreation? Or leave everything you’ve ever known to chase your dreams of becoming a para-athlete and potentially a paralympian?

It is our ultimate goal, in essence, to ensure that no home-grown para-athlete from the Pacific Northwest is ever forced to make that decision ever again. With the addition of the para-athletes from Vancouver, Canada and beyond, UW has the chance to be THE leader in adaptive recreation on the west coast.

This all starts with education, outreach and behavior change. Firstly, as outlined above, we would begin by training ALL our staff on adaptive recreation, led by the new Adaptive Recreation Coordinator (funded by CSF). The Adaptive Rec Coordinator would also lead the charge on outreach in our monthly adaptive recreation events, which would lead to the most incredible behavior change of all: adaptive athletes being able to live and recreate in our existing spaces, right alongside their able-bodied counterparts who are already practicing Recreation members. This would effectively eliminate the barriers of entry as well as alter perception from “this is a person who needs a wheelchair to play basketball” to “this player is an ATHLETE. Period.”

FEASIBILITY & ACCOUNTABILITY

As we’ve mentioned, we already have many individual, siloed adaptive recreation offerings. What we are lacking and needing CSF’s support for is bringing these all together and staffing them effectively. 

Therefore, the feasibility of our proposal is baked into what we’re already doing, just doing it more efficiently and effectively! We have the full support of our Extended Executive Team here at UW Recreation, who all played a part in drafting this LOI, as well as all our program managers. If we are able to secure funding to staff this project, we can in turn transform this project into an actual branch of the Recreation Department.

The same argument applies for accountability. As every staff member of Recreation, starting at the top with our Director Shelbi Long, including our professional, classified and student staffers is in full support of this proposal, we ALL will play a part in ensuring that it is successful. Every manager is incredibly eager to receive more support and funding to take their adaptive offerings to the next level. This CSF grant cycle is the first step in doing that.

BUDGET

Again, in this current proposal we are only asking for support for our short term goals (SY26-27) to help us get off the ground; building an incredibly important bridge from our current disjointed adaptive offerings to our envisioned cohesive Adaptive Recreation branch. We believe that short-term success will open up many new doors after our proof-of-concept has been realized.

Any grant money received from CSF will go directly towards funding student staff.

SY26-27 (Starting in Fall ‘26)

• Adaptive Recreation Coordinator
  • One part-time student staff at 10 hours/week for 10 weeks/quarter (fall, winter & spring) (300 total hours)
• 10 hours/week for existing student-staff within individual program areas for 10 weeks/quarter (300 total hours)
• 600 total hours per year x $21.38 = $12,828 plus benefit load rate of roughly 23% = 15778.44
• AdaptX certification= $500 

Total: $16,278.44

As with all adaptive offerings, patrons would be able to participate 100% free of charge, meaning we need help in covering staffing costs which would normally be recouped by participant fees.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the CSF grant would provide the essential funding for the start of a new era within our department, at our University as a whole, and within the greater Pacific Northwest and west coast in general. Without the funding for the short-term goal of creating our proposed Adaptive Recreation Coordinator and paying existing student staffers working in each individual program area’s specific adaptive recreation offerings, none of our medium-term or long-term goals are possible. 

We are so tantalizingly close to making a seismic change within our University community, as well as in the space of adaptive recreation on an international scale. Please help us continue this vital momentum now that CSF helped us secure our most expensive equipment needed (our top-of-the-line sport wheelchairs) and propel us forward into the future: one where para-athletes of all levels find a community and a home at UW. 

STAKEHOLDERS

Cole Elston, Intramurals Intern & current UW Junior

Katie Carroll, Intramurals Manager

Intramurals Student Staff: Program Leads Riley St. John (our former intern), Darby Slack and Abby Heinicke, Program Assistants Alaina Morgan, Jaiden Wire, Hallie Brigham, Tabitha Horman, James Alvarez Patrick, Emily Christey, Michael Boakye-Ansah, Asmit Sinha, Official Lead Zac Trevorrow

Shelbi Long, Director of Recreation

Gregory Reinhart, Associate Director of Programs & Assessment for UW Rec

Sam Rodenberg, Associate Director of Facilities & Operations for UW Rec

Jeff Palmer, Assistant Director for Fitness, Wellness & Sports for UW Rec