Before joining this class, my knowledge of disability in sports was limited. I took a sport history class and an Olympics course at my previous college, Brockport, and these courses briefly covered this topic. With that being said, I could only name a couple of athletes.
One being Jason McElwain (more famously known as J Mac). He is an autistic boy from Greece, New York a suburb of Rochester, which is only minutes from Brockport. J Mac was a manager on the basketball team at his high school, Greece Athena. During the division title game against Spencerport in 2006, Greece Athena developed a large lead and the coach decided to put McElwain in. To everyone's surprise, J Mac hit six three-pointers and a two-pointer finishing the game with 20 points in just four minutes. Once the game was over, the crowd rushed the court and embraced J Mac as they put him on their shoulders and carried him around the gym. Currently, there is a movie being written about J Mac and should be filmed within the next couple years.
The other athlete that I could name was Oscar Pistorious, a South African runner who is a double amputee. Pistorious uses artificial legs, called Cheetah Flex-Foot, from the knee down. Pistorious is known by many as "the fastest man without legs" and dominates in paralympic events. He currently holds world records and is always the runner to beat. During 2007, Pistorious tried his hand in the Olympics qualifiers. Despite breaking his own fastest time and finishing third in the race against able-bodied competitors, Pistorious was about a second behind the qualifying time to make it into the Olympics. Pistorious is changing the way athletes with disabilities are viewed and proved that he could compete against some of the world's best runners against all odds.
I have the upmost respect for disabled athletes. Speaking from experince, I know how stressful sports can be. I could not imagine competing having a disability.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad you shared Youtube clips on both of these athletes. I first saw the clip of J-Mac in one of the classes and was really inspired by his performance. I would love to see the movie about him. I think the story of Pistorious is also intriguing and I am going to see if I can find out more information about his controversy as well. Thanks for sharing these two examples.
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