This past Wednesday, we participated at the Beyond Limits Wheelchair Sports Camp for the second year in a row, sponsored by the Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation and run by our friends Scott Hubbard and Mary Beth Schubauer. Pool time is limited during the summer, and after nearly 5 years of lobbying for pool time for kayaking at this wheelchair camp, last year, we were given only 45 minutes introduce our program to these non-traditional paddlers.  We ran 30+ kids through kayaks a few minutes at a time and their response was very positive.   It was obvious from the very beginning - a kayak can go places wheelchairs cannot go, where there are no speed bumps, curbs or need for ramps.

Click Here for more pictures from the 2013 Beyond Limits Wheelchair Sports Camp.

This year, we had a full 3 hours and were able to make a much bigger impact with smaller groups for longer periods.  Several members of the Greater Albuquerque / Santa Fe Kayak Meetup group (a community of NMKI students and others) came out to volunteer. I know each of the volunteers have their favorite person or story, but my favorite is the young lady who had 0% use of her right hand.  She had to pry her thumb open with one hand to grasp a hand paddle, and press her hand against her chest to fully close her grip on the paddle.  The hand-paddle fell out after a few strokes.  But when she grabbed a paddle, and pried her fingers open, placed the paddle inside her palm, and pressed her fingers closed with her functioning hand, she could then use her left hand, and the link through the paddle to control her right hand.  She spent the rest of the hour doing something I'm sure she though may have never been possible - using her right hand.

We look forward to being a part of next year's camp.

If you run a summer camp for kids or people with disabilities, and would like to incorporate kayaking into your program, please contact us.  We can design a custom program, from one day, to one week (three days is ideal), depending on the pool time available.