I have physical education and physiotherapy degrees, just for you to get an idea of my background. I participated at the University of Western Ontario in ice hockey and then I did a physiotherapy degree at the University of Toronto, where I participated in soccer and ice hockey. I now compete in the individual sport of para-cycling because post-head injury, team sports would not work for me.
I have tried basketball in a wheelchair and sledge hockey. There are only elite opportunities to play, and there's very little female opportunity in sledge hockey, so there is no grassroots or educational opportunities that exist for those.
There are three points that I'd like to make about female disabled sports. That's a little different from able-bodied sport.
First of all, sports are different for a person with a disability. City accessibility committees seem to worry about physical structures such as curbs and ramps. Little thought is given to sport mobility devices that disabled women use for fitness and what assistance they need to use the mobility device to successfully do a workout or sport. No grassroots programs are in existence to allow for the disabled woman to set goals to become involved in elite sports, so basically in the beginning, disabled people sit in their houses and don't know how to get involved. There aren't any opportunities to get involved in many places across our country.
Second, active supervision and leadership are lacking for disabled female athletes. Often there are facilities such as pools adapted for disabled athletes. Coaches and activity partners are required at the grassroots recreational level to provide a program for female disabled youth and adults. This needs to be provided. Cities boast about having accessible pools where you can use a ramp to get in, but they don't have any programs to accept disabled people. Females and males can go to the pool, but then how do they get in? How do they swim? They need either an activity buddy or someone, a staff member, there to walk with them or get them into the water and get them moving.
Third, in elite disabled women's sport, few females are coaches and are providing leadership. In my para-cycling team, there are no female coaches or managers. No form of leadership at the elite level is female.
Thirdly, what about facilities and time given by cities, schools, or universities to female disabled sports? It doesn't seem to exist. There are no grassroots or recreational programs for female disabled sports. If somebody at U of T wants to go into a program or wants to play inner tube water polo and they're disabled, there are no opportunities for them yet.
Disabled women are taxpayers too, so we need to get facilities and cities involved, because 16% of Canadians are disabled, and that number is just going to go up.