Rob – What adaptive sports interest you?

I’ve tried every sport there probably is, tennis is my favorite. I actually have created a program in Atlanta to get new players involved in tennis, I’ve written a few grants and I have five program chairs. I hold clinics to get new players out and try to teach them tennis; it’s actually probably the biggest thing that got me out of depression. Just when I first saw it, watching these guys push a chair, hold a tennis racket, hit a tennis ball and it looked as good as anybody else, it was huge. And I was like “I got to try that.” And I found out how hard it was to actually get into tennis in Atlanta, but I did have somebody that reached out to me, and gave me a chair, and kind got me involved and loved it ever since. The best thing about tennis to me is I can go play anybody, I don’t have to play other chair players, I play in an able-body league. We have several chair leagues here, but it’s so big that I can pick up my chair, throw it in my car. There’s very minimal equipment—you have a chair, and a tennis racket and you can play. For sled hockey, you got to have ice time; you got to have the rink and everything else. So, to me it’s one of the easiest sports to do, and I actually help out a lot at Shepherd Center here and meet people that are going back to their hometown. And that’s actually how I ended up in able-body tennis because I kept on telling them, “you can go back to your community and play,” and I hadn’t done it and so I was like I’ve got to try this. And it’s been an experience because there’s a lot of differences as far as movement, but you can play an able-body and be competitive.