Redefining Disability

A new show premieres on National Geographic on May 31st called Breaking Bobby Bones. In each half-hour episode, Bobby pursues his own mantra—Fight. Grind. Repeat.—by traveling to far-flung destinations across the country to find people with unique jobs, skills, hobbies and abilities. He meets everyday heroes who challenge him while also exploring the triumphs and tragedies that made these folks who they are today. Two of those episodes delve into the world of adaptive sports.

So today, we are thrilled to talk with Bobby Bones himself as well as extreme sports athlete Lonnie Bedwell, the focus of one of the Breaking Bobby Bones episodes.

Bobby Bones is an American radio and television personality, best known for hosting the nationally syndicated The Bobby Bones Show and for his role as a mentor on American Idol on ABC. He has also written two New York Times best sellers.

Lonnie Bedwell is a former Navy Petty Officer, who was critically injured in 1997 during a hunting accident that instantly took his sight. He is considered the first blind athlete to kayak the entire 226 miles of the Colorado River that stretches through the Grand Canyon and was named the 2015 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.

Joe Delagrave was a three sport athlete throughout high school, which led him to play Division II football at Winona State University. But on July 10, 2004 a casual boating adventure with some friends on the Mississippi River turned into a life altering accident. In the matter of a split second, he went from a college football player to a paralyzed 19 year old kid. He would discover wheelchair rugby, a sport that helped him become independent, confident and fuel his competitive fire. He has been a member and captain of the USA Team for several years now.

Mickey Zeljkovic is a five-time Serbian National Champion as a fencer and a former Paralympic National Head Coach for Kuwait. Now, he runs his own fencing club in the Philadelphia area and has developed multiple club programs for Paralympic fencers on the East Coast. In 2018, Mickey was named head coach of Team USA’s parafencing squad and has managed the qualification efforts for the 2021 Paralympic Games. So we talk about parafencing and how to get started in the sport.

In 2002, Chuck Melton acquired a C7 spinal cord injury from a diving accident. Five years after his accident, he began to play wheelchair rugby in at a local program in St. Louis. For the past 12 years, he has been a member of the national team, winning a silver medal at the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio. He is hoping to better that finish at the upcoming games in Tokyo.

Mary Hodge has coached four Paralympic Games. When she first started, she was the only female para coach in the U.S. at the time. She first got involved in sports for people with disabilities in 1988 when she started a local team for athletes with Cerebral Palsy. As the High-Performance Manager at US Para Powerlifting, headquartered at Logan University, her main goal within the organization is to help athletes earn medals and achieve their dreams of representing Team USA.

Desmond Jackson is considered the fastest above knee amputee in the United States, currently holding the national record in the 100m dash. Throughout his life, Dez has been blazing trails. In middle school, he became the first amputee to compete in track and field in the state of North Carolina. At the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio he turned 16 years old and was the youngest African American male to make the U.S. Track & Field Paralympic Team that year. He hopes to continue to break records and blaze trails at the Tokyo Games this summer.

Sports have been a huge part of Navy Veteran Jared Lenahan's life. As he gets older, he continues to find himself more involved in sports. It was while he was climbing in Italy that Jared fell to the ground, sustaining significant injuries. But that hasn’t stopped him. Nor has it altered his love and passion for climbing. In fact, Jared is currently ranked the 7th best para climber in the world in his division and he hopes to open his own adaptive climbing gym in the future.

Ellen Geddes was actively competing in the equestrian sport of dressage when a car accident left her paralyzed at 22 years old. While she rehabilitating at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, she was introduced to different adaptive sports. But there was one that caught her attention. Now she is a member of Team USA and is aiming to compete at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo in parafencing.

After suffering injuries from a roadside bomb in Iraq, retired Army Specialist Kyle Moxley tried different sports. Each new sport led him to figure how his true abilities and narrow down what he wanted to do. Moxley settled on skiing because it freed his mind from what happened in the past or all the bad things. He trains with the National Sports Center for the Disabled (NSCD) and is currently ranked sixth in the nation in alpine skiing.

Growing up, sports was difficult for Sophia Herzog as she felt it was not really a level playing field for individuals like her. But now the Paralympic Silver Medalist, who is an athlete ambassador for the Women’s Sports Foundation and served as a guest speaker for National Girls and Women in Sports Day this year, is inspiring the next generation to find their passion and have confidence to know that they can do whatever they put their mind to.