Laughter, yelling and cheering are the first sounds a visitor hears as they enter the Calgary Soccer Center. Field upon field, one after the other are all occupied by individuals playing soccer or lacrosse. Walking up to the field directly adjacent to the front doors, balls are being caught in mid air with lacrosse sticks. Other participants group together on the field, chatting and laughing while additional members join the group tying their shoes or gathering their gear before joining those already on the field.
“Bring it in! Bring it in!” shouts Scott Godfrey, founder of Lacrossing Barriers, an all inclusive and adaptable recreational program.
Active living is a huge part of Canadian society, but not everyone gets the opportunity to live actively due to physical, mental or other barriers. Organizations around Calgary are covering all their bases to ensure everybody gets to experience this side of Canadian society.
Lacrossing Barriers began developing in 2010 during Godfrey’s time at the Autism Aspergers Friendship Society of Calgary. In 2015, the first version of Lacrossing Barriers kicked off on a six-week trial run. The recreational program took off and now runs 32 weeks a year, or more if highly requested.
Focusing on building community through recreational activities for people with physical and mental disabilities, Godfrey has expanded beyond the sport of lacrosse to include boxing and gymnastics.
“In Alberta alone, there are over 40,000 people who use a wheeled mobility aid every day. And there’s 45,000 people that use one daily for recreation,” said Godfrey. “The fact is, they cannot choose Canada’s national summer sport. It’s not that they don’t want to, it’s that they don’t have a choice.”
Participants of all abilities and disabilities are lined up against the boards of the arena, slowly inching from one end to the other, doing leg sweeps and toe touches. Godfrey stands in the middle of the field and begins passing leadership roles off to varying participants by asking them to select the next stretch they do as a team.
He prides himself in working one-on-one with each participant, ensuring each individual is reaching their full potential and goals that they have set for themselves. Godfrey adds the close up and personal mentorship doesn’t necessarily take a week or two.
“It might take a year or two, but if you support and you listen, those people understand that they’re not going to get let down. They’re not going to get forgotten. And they achieve what they achieve, the way they need. They learn and grow the way they need.”
As yellow tennis balls bang against the protective plexiglass that separates the fans from the players., an orchestra of banging tennis balls accumulate to resemble the sound that occurs when hail thuds down on a house’s roof in unison. Again and again, practice makes perfect.
Social Movement
For a century, there has been a push to make sports more accessible and inclusive for the disabled population. Over time, this push sparked a global movement.
David Legg, founder of Adapted Hub Calgary and professor of sport management and adapted physical activity at Mount Royal University, says there is an evolution of how inclusivity has been introduced in sport and recreation.
Starting with the first major movement of the Deaflympics in 1924, which featured inclusive sports for the hearing impaired, Legg said the Deaflympics is more of a cultural celebration than a high-performance sport and was mostly created because of the segregation the deaf community endured by the hearing community.
Similar to the Deaflympics, the Special Olympics was born after Canadian researcher Frank Hayden conducted a research study on people with Down Syndrome and the result of what happens when they are physically active. The experiment began to draw attention to the matter. Today, the Special Olympics is run globally, and specifically for people with intellectual disabilities.
The Paralympics movement followed the Special Olympics and was initially targeting veterans who would come home from the war with spinal cord injuries following WWII. Acting as more of a rehabilitation activity for those who have permanent and life altering injuries, it grew into sporting events.
“And then over time, they started adding different disability groups so people with cerebral palsy, amputation, blindness and visual impairment [could participate],” said Legg. “They also have another group called Les Autres, which is French and translates to ‘the others.’ So, that would include people that have dwarfism.”
Although these driving force movements were world changing, it was not an overnight change. There were many social movements within the bigger movements that pushed for change and advocated for the underdog.
Adapted Hub
Adapted Hub Calgary is a non-profit organization that serves Calgary by connecting individuals with disabilities to adaptable and inclusive sport and recreational programs in mitigating different physical, mental and financial needs.
“Last year, in 2023 to 2024, we had 3,000 kids that were touched by Calgary Adapted Hub,” said director of Adapted Hub, Jen Goeres. “So we know that there’s a significant need for kids and our children and our youth.”
Adapted Hub fulfills their mission by providing personal consultations with families or individuals, and takes the different needs and desires into account when matching them with a potential program.
Housing over a hundred partners that specialize in creating inclusive opportunities for people with disabilities, including Lacrossing Barriers and Between Friends, an organization that also focuses on regular interactions for disabled people alongside recreational interactions.
Between Friends
Between Friends is a non-profit organization that caters to the disabled community by running a series of programs specifically designed to implement teamwork and critical thinking skills through recreation like summer camps and bowling. Operating for 40 years, Between Friends serves Calgary and Central Alberta.
Chief executive officer of Between Friends, Kimberley Presser said most of their programs take place within the community so as to not segregate people with disabilities away from the able body population.
“The big thing is, very often people with disabilities are chronically lonely. If you kind of go back in time, a lot of people with disabilities stayed in their houses or even were institutionalized,” said Presser. “And now, we’re getting to a place where programs like Between Friends are changing the view and the mentality that the community has about people with disabilities.”
Although there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in the disabled community amidst the social movement of disabilities in recreation and sports, Between Friends is constantly playing into the social change element.
“We don’t want to exist. We’re trying to work ourselves out of a job,” explains Presser. “That to us means that people with disabilities are accepted in the community. They don’t need additional support. They aren’t being left out of events and different opportunities.”
Change
Legg said there is change still underway and there is still a lot of work to be done within the disabled community to be able to sustain inclusion and acceptance. Legg suggested policy change is something that could be the next upcoming progression in this field.
“Some would argue and push back and say, ‘Well, that’s tokenism,’” said Legg. “I think it’s okay to have targets and a certain percentage of staff on the National Paralympic Committee should have a disability.”
Despite the slow progression and the long way society has yet to go, there is still progress being made.
“If you look at it from a historical perspective, I would say lots has improved in the last 10 to 20 years,” said Legg.