Discrimination

Not the same playing field?

We all know there are opportunities for people with disabilities to compete in sports. With these opportunities comes questions on whether "disabled" athletes should compete with "normal" athletes. There have been lots of cases where a team, school, club, organization, etc. has not accepted an athlete because the athlete was "disabled" not even considering their talents because they don't want a "disabled" athlete on their team. Lets look into one of the most popular cases: the 2012 Olympic case with Oscar Pistorious. And yes, lets put aside his personal and legal life for the sake of the case here.

I'm sure we've all heard of Oscar Pistorious, The Blade Runner, who broke through the Olympic barrier in 2012 when he, a double leg amputee, competed in the Olympics. The regular, "normal athlete" Olympics. Most people were thrilled to see that a Paralympic athlete was successful enough to qualify for the "regular" Olympics, but there were still a lot of skeptics. Now, I won't go into lots of details because there are plenty of articles and debates on this and I just want to talk about the general discrimination "disabled" athletes face all the time. Some of those skeptics to Pistorious actually believed that he had an advantage over the "normal" athletes. An ADVANTAGE. What? Yeah. People believed that because Pistorious has his "blades", they gave him an advantage because they have more spring to them that regular legs do. Those people obviously have never had first hand experience with trying to learn how to do things with NO LEGS. They still thought they needed to put their two cents in to argue that not only should Pistorious not be competing because he isn't a "normal" athlete but also saying he has an advantage because he isn't a "normal" athlete. Does that make sense to anyone, cause it doesn't make any sense to me. Luckily, that case was kind of giving the impression that an athlete IS better because they are "disabled" when it is almost always the other way around; that an athlete ISN'T good enough because they are "disabled".

Here's my personal experience. (You're probably sick of hearing about me in these blogs, sorry.) I grew up in a very small town. I graduated with 21 people in my class. I grew up with my whole class so, to my advantage, they thought it was completely normal that I didn't have an arm because they were just used to it. Well through sports, I was always treated like all of the other athletes and had the same expectations. (There's that "tough love" again.) I never had my coach or another coach question my ability to be successful in a sport or activity. I was selected to multiple all-star games after my senior season of volleyball and was even recruited to play at a Division II college. To try to make a long story short, the coach that recruited me, got a different job and left so a brand new coach that had never seen me play was getting an athlete that all he knew about didn't have an arm and played wearing a prosthetic. I right away had problems with the coach not believing I could play front row because I didn't have a hand to control the block. I went through a couple weeks of practice never getting a fair shake at the front row so I was stuck as a defensive specialist. Now, that story goes on but it's not necessary right now. That was the first time I was ever questioned in whether I was able to be successful in anything. It definitely didn't have a positive impact on me. It made me rethink all of the success I had previous to college and that situation actually made me believe that I wasn't good enough. It wasn't until recently that I was able to look back on my accomplishments and realize how wrong that coach was.

 http://nebhalloffame.org/2015-kenzie-may/

I wanted to share that story because until it actually happened to me, I didn't think anyone was ever treated badly or unfairly. I just want people to know that it does happen and there are people that just tear people down. The important thing is to not let it get to you and prove your abilities.