The First Barrier Isn’t Physical

I've spent most of my life around sports. As a kid, I found my lane in sports for a simple reason: I never really saw myself the way other people saw me. I was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, use a wheelchair, and stand 4'5". Other people often saw limitations. I saw competition. I saw teammates. I saw the chance to be part of something bigger than myself. Looking back, that may have been one of the greatest gifts sports gave me. It taught me that belonging often starts with belief.

Over the years, sports has taken me places I never imagined. I've worked with professional teams, international events, governing bodies, sponsors, and athletes around the world. Through all of it, I've learned something that has very little to do with wins and losses. People do not participate in things they do not believe are for them.

The obvious barriers are easy to identify. Equipment. Facilities. Transportation. Funding. Those challenges are real, but I've come to believe they are often symptoms rather than root causes. We frequently talk about sports participation as if it suffers from dozens of separate problems. Not enough facilities. Not enough funding. Not enough coaches. Not enough volunteers. Not enough awareness.

In reality, many of these challenges stem from the same issue: participation. There are more potential athletes out there than most people realize. The challenge is not a lack of people. The challenge is that too many people never find their way into the ecosystem. When participation numbers are small, everything becomes harder. It becomes harder to secure facilities, attract sponsors, build leagues, develop coaches and volunteers, create meaningful competition, and sustain organizations over the long term.

The challenge is not simply helping one athlete find one sport. The challenge is building enough participation to create a thriving community. And that is where belief comes in.

Many people simply do not believe they belong. Many parents of children with disabilities have spent years hearing about limitations rather than possibilities. Doctors, educators, therapists, and society generally mean well, but the conversation often centers on what a child cannot do instead of what they can. Over time, expectations become constrained.

As a result, families sometimes underestimate what sport can mean for their children. Not because they lack ambition. Not because they don't care. But because they have never been shown what is possible. What begins as recreation can become friendship, confidence, independence, travel, leadership opportunities, collegiate competition, national team participation, and for a select few, even the Paralympic Games. The same challenge exists for adults.

Many adults with disabilities have never been introduced to adaptive sports. Some acquired a disability later in life. Others simply grew up without access to opportunities. After years of navigating inaccessible environments and lowered expectations, many stop seeing themselves as athletes. Not because they can't participate, but because it never occurred to them that they belong there. That realization has changed the way I think about sports, inclusion, and community building.

We are not simply trying to recruit athletes. We are helping people reimagine what is possible. That is where storytelling becomes essential.

A parent sees a wheelchair basketball player heading to college. A veteran sees another veteran return to competition after a life changing injury. A child sees someone who looks like them wearing a team jersey. An adult discovers someone their age learning a new sport. In an instant, possibility becomes visible. The conversation changes. This is why I don't view storytelling as a marketing tactic. I view it as infrastructure.

Throughout history, sport has often served as society's proving ground for inclusion. It provided one of the first highly visible platforms where people of different races competed together and where women demonstrated their athletic ability on a national stage. Sport didn't solve these issues, but it helped make inclusion visible. Sport has a unique ability to turn unfamiliarity into familiarity. Teammates become friends. Competitors become respected rivals. Fans rally around people they may never have understood otherwise. Disability may be the next chapter in that story.

One of the biggest mistakes we make is treating disability as a niche issue. It isn't. Disability touches nearly every family eventually. Sometimes through birth. Sometimes through injury. Sometimes through illness. Sometimes through aging. The person with no connection to disability today may have one tomorrow.

That is why the conversation cannot stay within the disability community. If adaptive sports is going to reach its full potential, it must become part of the broader sports conversation. Because at its best, sport has never really been about winning.

It is about belonging. And in my experience, the first barrier to belonging is rarely physical. It is helping people believe they belong in the first place.