Kari Craddock of Richland Center will compete in wheelchair racing.
For the first time in the event’s 33-year history, the Adaptive Sports USA’s Junior Nationals competition is coming to the Madison area — and Sauk Prairie native Gregg Baumgarten couldn’t be more excited.
“There really haven’t been opportunities for young kids with physical disabilities in Wisconsin to get involved in parasports,” says Baumgarten, who now lives in Gilbert, Ariz., and is both the national chair of Adaptive Sports USA’s board of directors and director of Junior Nationals. The event will bring more than 200 athletes between the ages of 7 and 22 with a variety of physical disabilities to Middleton High School July 16-22.
Participants qualified for Junior Nationals in regional competitions around the country, including at the Dairyland Games, Wisconsin’s first-ever qualifying event for disabled athletes, held at Sauk Prairie High School in May. Among the 23 participants were 12-year-old wheelchair racer Kari Craddock of Richland Center and 7-year-old wheelchair racer and shot putter Hayden Smith of Verona — both of whom will compete at Junior Nationals. There will be as many as eight competitors from Wisconsin at the games.
Spectator admission is free to all events, which include track and field, swimming, archery, powerlifting, table tennis, air gun and paratriathlon. “It’s great to have people out there cheering these kids on,” Baumgarten says. “It’s an inspiration for everyone.”
Recognition of parasports has been increasing since the emergence of Tatyana McFadden, a former Junior Nationals competitor whose legal persistence as a high school wheelchair racer in Maryland led to greater accommodations nationwide for para-athletes. And NBC and NBCSN plan to broadcast an unprecedented 66 hours of Paralympic Games coverage from Rio this September.
“There’s much more awareness now, and more people realize that these competitors are amazing athletes,” Baumgarten says. “I think the United States is catching up to other countries in the Paralympics movement.”
Statewide, the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association has provided inclusion opportunities for high school athletes with physical challenges for years — “which makes our mission even more critical,” Baumgarten says. “These sports require lots of training, and with greater opportunities when they’re younger, these kids are going to be pretty accomplished athletes by the time to they get to high school.”
