Access to sport

Andrea Cole says every athlete needs to start somewhere.

The Thunder Bay Accessible Sport Council is a good place to start, she said, praising the newly formed organization’s goal of bringing awareness to disabled sport and fostering participation by everyone in the community.

Cole, a swimmer who made three trips to the Paralympics, including a 2000 gold medal as part of Canada’s 4x100-metre freestyle relay team in Sydney, Australia and silver in Athens four year later, said sport has so much to offer and enriches the lives of everyone who participates.
 
“Swimming has given me the confidence to dream big,” said Cole, stricken with cerebral palsy at birth. “Whenever I dove into the pool, the impossible became possible.”

She has high hopes for the council, and though she reached the heights her sport had to offer, Cole said for most just being able to participate in athletic endeavours will have a marked impact on their lives.

“I don’t think everybody needs to be a master at their sport to get something out of it,” she said, adding that when she left the city eight years ago, she dreamed of returning armed with her experience, determined to share it with the next generation.

In the back of her mind, an accessible sport council was always a dream, but she wasn’t sure it would ever happen.

“I was so pleased when I came home and exactly what I dreamed would happen, happened – a network of support for a community which I think a lot of the athletes and a lot of the schools you could draw from to gain interest are spread out,” Cole said.

“It’s dispersed. I think it’s really important to bring everybody together.”

Until now, many of the sports catering to the disabled had been running their own show. Sports like sledge hockey, wheelchair curling, para-alpine and para-Nordic skiing, blind curling and goalball had pockets of interest, but no real way of effectively marketing themselves.

The council allows them to join forces, combine events and advertising, share best practices and encourage Thunder Bay residents to support and take part in activities.

Tessa Soderberg, the council chairwoman, said the creation of an umbrella-type agency was long past due.

“We have half a dozen sports and we’re all trying to basically do the same thing. What we’re saying is why don’t we unite and do it as a whole. Why don’t we advertise as a group? Why don’t we have a membership drive as a group, or look for volunteers as a group?” she said.

“That way someone can say, ‘I’d like to volunteer, but I don’t know what to do,’ and we can say here’s the six sports we run … We have all kinds of possibilities. Take a look and try these sports out and see what you’d like to do,” Soderberg said.

Soderberg, who accepted a $2,500 start-up grant from ParaSport Ontario, said it’s also a great way to expose the sports to the community at large.

“It’s basically a matter of getting people out and getting them active and getting them involved with their community, and also bringing the able-bodied people out and getting them involved and interested and willing to try something that they might not have thought trying before,” she said.