MAYOR’S CUP CANCELLED DUE TO EXTEME HEAT
Due to the heat advisory for the weekend the City of Boston and Boston EMS has asked that we cancel the Regatta
Due to the heat advisory for the weekend the City of Boston and Boston EMS has asked that we cancel the Regatta
Our friends at Rapscallion Table & Tap has organized the first Running Into Summer 5K (RIS 5K) to benefit AccesSportAmerica. On May
Most of us don’t like to look foolish being overly optimistic. From believing our home team will win a championship to saying
AccesSport is a community of hope and optimism. We’ve said this at basically every event and I’ve put something about hope in almost every blog or letter I’ve written. We truly know that this program works. People find more function and a place in this larger family - and have fun. Our history gives us confidence in the techniques and equipment we develop. This was never truer than in last March.
We’re coming into our 25th year in 2020. This is remarkable considering how this was built from nothing. I remember the first meeting of volunteers back in 1995. I had been adapting and teaching windsurfing to people with disabilities for about 10 years already. We just had really good media exposure with a Globe cover story about Josh and my windsurfing marathons and Dr. Tim Johnson’s great piece about our family on Good Morning America. All of the sudden, people were interested in helping us out and wanting to volunteer.
We run three major events each year. The Mayor’s Cup Regatta, The Auction for Access Gala, and our Run/Roll for Access. The Regatta and the Gala are truly big events with hundreds of attendees. The Run for Access is smaller with a 20-30 participants but the impact is equal to one in which hundreds of people run or push.
We are so pleased the Nike has signed Justin Gallegos as a sponsored athlete. He’s a terrific cross country runner and the first athlete living with cerebral palsy to be signed by them. This is exactly what we, in this community and AccesSportAmerica feel is long overdue. We believe in compelling athletes everywhere living with varying challenges and disabilities.
We’re going back to our roots this summer. Back in 1995, we found a great site on the Charles River and invited individuals and groups to windsurf. We’re not at the same spot on the Charles but we’re back on the river at an incredible site in Waltham. We’re calling this our AccesSportAmerica Summer Sports Program at Watch City. The paddling is more interesting and varied than any site we’ve known. We can windsurf safely there and the cycling paths are picturesque with a truly perfect grade for adaptive applications like ours.
WCVB Channel 5 visited our recent football clinic at Harvard Stadium. Along with members of the Harvard Football team and the New England Patriots, we run this football clinic each May for students with disabilities from Boston Public Schools and Cotting School. This year we had the pleasure of giving Channel 5 viewers an enthusiastic, AccesSport wake up call! Thank you to the Patriots, Harvard Football, and our many volunteers and supporters who helped out at the clinic this year!
The In School Program, The New England Patriots, and Harvard University. Each year we celebrate our athletes with whom we train throughout the school year. These students are primarily from Boston Public Schools and the Cotting School of Lexington, Massachusetts. The skills of these athletes are varied. Everyone is compelling, given the gifts, challenges, abilities, and disabilities within each. We train in the spaces that are available. Sometimes we are in gyms and other times cafeterias, auditoriums, and even hallways. We use game systems and drills that push these high school aged students to be and see themselves as true athletes. Our athletes are rarely in any spotlight or recognized formally. This is why, each year, we celebrate them with a football clinic at Harvard University with volunteers from the football team and players from the New England Patriots.
Jean is responsible for the day-to-day operations of AccesSportAmerica including responding to requests. One of her primary responsibilities is the scheduling of athletes and determining the program best suited for the athlete’s particular needs. Jean has been involved since AccesSportAmerica’s founding in 1996. She help found AccesSport with her husband, Ross.
Ross has been adapting and teaching high-challenge sports since 1983. He has been involved in personal training and coaching since the late 1970’s. An ordained minister, his primary interest has been in creating places and activities to overcome disparity and discrimination, especially for people living with disabilities. Ross is the foremost authority on adaptive windsurfing in the United States. In 1986, his son Josh was born with cerebral palsy and resulting spastic quadriplegia. When Josh was four years old, Josh and Ross began windsurfing together. Josh became the catalyst and inspiration for AccesSportAmerica and to this day is AccesSport’s “Chief Test Pilot”.
The first to adapt the sport of windsurfing, Ross adapts sports and creates/develops equipment to accommodate all disabilities. He also creates programs and training/coaching regimens in collaboration with the trainers to accommodate a wide range of disabilities to inspire the athlete to achieve higher function and fitness, better conditioning and improved health all within a welcoming and hope-filled community.
Ross has twice received the Boston Celtics’ Heroes Among Us Award, the Massachusetts Governor’s Committee on Physical Fitness and Sports’ Neighborhood Superstar Award, and numerous other awards. He received a BA in Economics from New York University and a M.Div from Andover Newton Theological School. He served as the pastor of South Acton Congregational Church, a post he held until 2001 when he resigned to devote himself full-time to AccesSportAmerica. Ross is a National Council on Strength and Fitness (NCSF) Certified Personal Trainer. Ross and Jean Lilley, and their children – Joshua and Hanna – are involved with AccesSportAmerica.
Nate has been with AccesSportAmerica since 2002, serving a year as a volunteer, quickly becoming a team leader, and since 2008 as Program Director of AccesSportAmerica. Nate has been instrumental in designing and implementing programs/training regimens at all of our sites. He is indefatigable in his efforts to urge our athletes to higher function. His spirit is infectious in the way he inspires all trainers/instructors to get the most out of each session. Nate’s responsibilities include overseeing programs at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Camp Harbor View, Massachusetts Hospital School, Boston Public Schools, and the YMCA. A graduate of St. Michael’s College, Nate is National Council on Strength and Fitness (NCSF) Certified Personal Trainer. AccesSportAmerica is greatly enhanced by his leadership and commitment.
Chris brings a lifetime of adaptive sport and training to AccesSportAmerica. He has worked at St. Colletta Day School, Kennedy Day School, Mass. Hospital School, and Quincy Public Schools as an educator with a specialty of children living with disabilities. Chris has worked with AccesSport since 1996 and his time at the Mass.Hospital School (now the Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital. Now, retired from Quincy Public schools, Chris works with AccesSport on a year round basis.
Cheryl Shea brings her talent and dedication as Art Director, a position she has held since the organization’s founding. Creatively and thoughtfully, Cheryl continues to successfully brand AccesSportAmerica. She is responsible for the design and development of all corporate identity and collateral materials including this website. During the school year, Cheryl is an Art Teacher for grades 6-8 in the Concord Public Schools. Year round, she also provides award-winning graphic and creative direction services for clients in Massachusetts and California. Her work has been exhibited and published nationally and internationally. “AccesSportAmerica is important to me because it’s the shortest distance between us and our best selves. Every single day.”
Biography coming soon.