Expanding Adapted Athletics at PennWest Benefits both Athletics and the University
Imagine dedicating yourself to your sport—putting in hours of practice, overcoming obstacles, and representing your university with pride—only to find your team barely mentioned in school media, passed over for funding, and left out of the broader athletic conversation. That’s the reality many college adapted athletes face. Adapted sports are an important component of PennWest’s identity that most people are unaware of. This must change as adapted athletics are a continuously growing field that deserves recognition and respect.
If you want any more evidence of the importance of adaptive athletics, ask co-captain of the Edinboro Fighting Scots wheelchair basketball team, Elijah Yoder. He said: “The game of wheelchair basketball has helped me both socially and professionally. Socially, this game has made me more outgoing and encouraged me to be myself. Professionally, it has helped me develop skills that will be good for the workforce, like leadership, teamwork, and communication.”
He added that adapted athletics shed light on a commonly overlooked disabled community. “Adapted athletics and wheelchair basketball specifically shows that disabled people can go out and do things in the world and that we are productive members of society, we don’t just sit on our couches all day and collect disability checks,” he said.
The wheelchair basketball team started at Edinboro way back in the late 1990’s, spearheaded by Jim Glatch, who retired at the end of the 2023-2024 season, after 29 years of service to PennWest Edinboro and its surrounding community. At that time, Edinboro had both a men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball team, adapted powerlifting, and a wheelchair tennis team. Unfortunately, these programs fizzled out due to lack of funding, leaving just the men’s wheelchair basketball team. Ever since, it has been a struggle to build the adapted athletics department up to what it once was.
In November 2024, Edinboro appointed William Speed as its adaptive athletics coach. Describing his new responsibilities, Coach Speed said, “My job is to create more opportunities for students with disabilities as well as community members with disabilities, adding adapted sports at a collegiate, intramural, and scholastic level.”
This is not the first time Speed has been tasked with such an undertaking. Prior to accepting the job as Glatch's replacement, he worked with the United States Tennis Association in Florida to grow the sports of wheelchair and adapted tennis across the country. Whether that included scheduling tournaments or starting teams, he made it his mission to give adapted sports more exposure and to help disabled people live happy and healthy lives.
He has been very passionate about adapted athletics and its expansion for the better part of 20 years. When Coach Speed was 21, he was in a motorcycle accident that caused him to become paralyzed from the waist down. He recalls that after his injury, he couldn’t play sports or do the things he used to do with his friends. Particularly, playing kickball and going bowling, both tasks of which seemed hopeless for him to do. This led to him feeling left out and alienated amongst the people he grew up with. This was until he came across adapted water skiing. This sport was something that he was able to do alongside his friends and family that made him feel included once again. Through this experience, he was introduced to wheelchair basketball, and he fell in love with it. When he was 27, he accepted an offer to play for Edinboro’s wheelchair basketball team, under Coach Glatch. His hope is to bring that same feeling of inclusion and happiness to the people with disabilities at PennWest Edinboro and its surrounding areas and give them outlets for growth and opportunities to play competitively at the collegiate level just like him.
Another advocate for the adapted athletics is PennWest President Jon Anderson, whose son has Down syndrome.
Dr Anderson said: “As a parent of a child with unique needs, I want to do everything I can to make sure that every person is able to participate from the position in which they are and it is my job to make sure we have avenues wherever possible to make that happen.
“Our son Bryce gives us a different perspective on how that works. So much of life is about who’s winning and who’s not and the older I get the, less I see it that way. It’s much more about improving what you have and what you are doing to make progress. And I believe adapted athletics is a perfect example of that.”
All this goes to say that no matter what abilities someone does or doesn’t have, everyone should be given the opportunity to progress regardless of limitations and adapted athletics highlights that.
Unfortunately, the history of PennWest and other institutions don’t see it that way. Adapted athletic programs exist at many colleges, including powerhouses like the University of Alabama, University of Illinois, and University of Arizona, where athletes compete in sports such as wheelchair basketball, track, and tennis. These athletes compete at elite levels, often earning national titles and spots on Paralympic teams. Yet, many students on these campuses don’t even know these programs exist. According to the National Wheelchair Basketball Association, only 12 universities in the United States offer full collegiate-level wheelchair basketball programs and only three are able to offer scholarships to their athletes.
Gaining equal recognition has also been an ongoing battle for adapted athletics at PennWest Edinboro. For example, it took the school three years to give the wheelchair basketball team a media day. Also, recognition at the end-of-the-year athletic award ceremony, the Scotties, was hard to come by.
Yoder said: “We are just now starting to see more of our guys getting awards, whereas in the past, our team kind of just showed up just to be there. There were years when we didn’t even receive a single nomination for any award.”
Yoder said there is now more exposure and support of adapted athletics on college campuses. “From my freshman year to now, it has definitely grown, but I feel like we still get overlooked in some aspects.”
However, he said there’s hope for the adapted athletics program. “With the right marketing and the right backing from the school, we can turn this into the biggest sport on campus.” He listed ways PennWest Edinboro can make that dream a reality.
He said: “I feel like more posting on social media could go a long way. Social media is a big thing in the marketing industry right now. So kind of utilizing social media and posting more about us, like they do with the other sports we provide here on campus – use it as a tool to market both the school and the sport.
“Promoting a sport like wheelchair basketball can help bring admissions up and can help bring more students in. It can show that we’re not just a regular school, we’re one of the top schools that offer inclusion, which is a big thing incoming students are looking for.”
Despite the troubles the adapted athletics program faced, Yoder finds solace in the fact that the program is finally starting to gain some traction and a voice. “With the group of guys we have now, we are more outgoing, more outspoken. We’re going to get what we want, and we are definitely going to get what we deserve.”
Dr. Anderson has ideas on how to get adapted athletics more support and recognition. He said: “We are trying to add more sports so we can have more people come to campus and so that more students can participate. And something that I can do is make sure that we’re adding the right sports in the right ways so the sports themselves can have all the resources they need for them to be competitive and successful. And then it’s about internal communication, getting the word out about events and those kinds of things.”
He added, “For wheelchair basketball in particular, I’ve been to one of your practices. They are really fun to watch and I want more people to experience that and see what you can do.”
Yoder has a lot of faith in what is to come for adapted athletics. He is very happy with the staffing, both from a coaching aspect as well as the standpoint of coordinating the growth and expansion of the adapted athletics program.
“I think we’re in great hands with Will Speed. He was definitely the right choice for this position. Having both Will Speed and DJ Murray at the helm as head and assistant coach is what’s going to make this expansion possible. Both of them are motivated and determined to grow awareness for adapted athletics and just the program itself in general.”
Yoder added that it’s important for the athletes to continue advocating for themselves for the expansion to get the momentum it needs. “The things that me and the other captains have done, as well as those who came before us, is just to continue advocating for ourselves and not being comfortable with where we’re at, always looking to see where we can grow next. I think we’re in a place right now where we need to keep moving and pushing further in order for us to get to where we want to be.”
Speed’s goals are clear. As of right now, he’s thinking towards more short term goals. He said: “My main goal right now is to win a national wheelchair basketball championship. Everything else will come.”
Those simple words are what defines adapted athletics as a whole. We take small steps in order to achieve big goals. He added: “As I get more comfortable in my position and after we achieve that championship, I want to start the expansion by adding recreational sports for disabled people all over the town of Edinboro. We don’t have many disabled people here in town like we do on campus, but I hope that with these programs, people with disabilities will want to live in town after they graduate. I want Edinboro to become a metropolis for them.”
The commitment of these three individuals should be eye opening to everyone. If we here at PennWest hope to achieve the inclusion and diversity we strive for, we should not overlook adapted athletics. Instead, we should embrace them and support them however we can, whether that is coming to support the Edinboro wheelchair basketball team or making sure they are getting the attention and funding they deserve. There is a part that we all can play and in turn we can reap all the benefits at a personal or institutional level.
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