Military groups receive Paralympic training

Heidi Grimm wishes she had a manual detailing how to work with disabled soldiers who become active in adaptive sports. She knows it doesn’t exist, meaning Army bases across the country must determine the best programming, with help from U.S. Paralympics.

Her advice? “Keep your minds open. Think outside the box. Be flexible,” said Grimm, a U.S. Paralympic military program consultant.

Paralympic athletes and coaches are teaching those principles, as well as fundamentals in seven adaptive sports, to 40 representatives from 17 military installations through a U.S. Paralympics clinic that began Monday at the Olympic Training Center.

Most participants have ties to the Warrior Transition Unit, an Army initiative in which a wounded soldier undergoes rehabilitation for a return to active duty or begins adjusting to civilian life before receiving a medical discharge.

Funding to support adaptive sports at Army bases, including Fort Carson, comes from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides $10 million in annual grants to the U.S. Olympic Committee. Opportunities to try new sports also exist in Paralympic sports clubs — there are 108 in 35 states, including one in Colorado Springs.

“If you just try it once, you’ll get hooked,” said Dan Schwieder, Paralympic sports club director of the city’s therapeutic recreation program. “They see that they can, and it opens a whole different kind of perspective.”