In 2019, Christopher Kelley (MS ‘21) was debating where to attend graduate school. As a nationally ranked wheelchair tennis player, he hoped to find a university with an adaptive sports program where he could be a student athlete. But he also wanted a program that challenged him academically.

Then he saw an article about a wheelchair basketball program launching at the University of Michigan. He reached out to the leader of the initiative, Dr. Oluwaferanmi Okanlami, known around campus as “Dr. O,” an already legendary accessibility pioneer.

I was born and raised in Michigan, Kelley wrote in an email to Dr. O. I love that you’re starting an adaptive sports program. It’s been a long time coming, but if a university in Michigan were to have a program, there’s no better place than U-M.

I’m not a basketball player, he continued. That’s not my sport. But let me know if you’re ever considering an adaptive tennis program. Whether I’m a student athlete or if I just help out in whatever way I can, I’d love to help start a program.

Dr. O was thrilled. He told Kelley that he was interested in running programs for every adaptive sport he could; his goal was to increase access, awareness, knowledge, and participation in adaptive sports overall. He couldn’t promise much concretely for Kelley considering the nascency of the program, but he encouraged Kelley to apply to graduate school at U-M, and he’d do what he could to support him as a student athlete.

“U-M’s sport management program was academically exactly what I wanted,” Kelley says. “I figured this was a really cool opportunity to get the academic education I want but also build a program in my home state, at a school that I love, and with a leadership structure that I have faith in.”

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Four years later, Kelley is translating his adaptive athlete background and Michigan Kinesiology education into professional success as a program coordinator for U-M Adaptive Sports & Fitness (ASF), where he still works under Dr. O., supporting the goals and dreams of student-athletes who are in the same position he was in a few years before.

“Working in adaptive sports, I need to feel confident working through a lot of dynamic projects, and my degree from the School of Kinesiology fostered that confidence,” he says.

So far, he’s helped host the first wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, and wheelchair tennis tournaments at U-M. He’s traveled to 15 states with adaptive athletes to assist with logistics and, in some instances, coach. The programs he and his team have fostered have enabled adaptive athletes to compete at national and international levels.

“The coolest thing, though,” Kelley says, “is that I work for a department that is changing the way para-sport is seen, working to ensure disabled athletes have equitable opportunities to be collegiate athletes, and supporting adaptive sport within the community with a potential for global impact.”

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Kelley’s largest project in the community vein involves working to embed adaptive sports into middle school physical education (PE) classes in Ann Arbor public schools.

“I would consider my experience in K-12 to be a lot better than a lot of people with disabilities,” says Kelley, who has a condition that causes brittle bones prone to fractures. “Everyone was relatively friendly to me, and my PE teachers tried to include me as much as they could. But it still was not the same experience as my able-bodied peers. So we’re trying to figure out: How can we make that experience better and educate the broader public about adaptive sports?”

To start, Kelley and several other ASF staff conduct disability awareness training for the PE teachers and their students. They show the instructors how to teach four adaptive sports: wheelchair basketball, wheelchair tennis, sitting volleyball, and goalball, a Paralympic sport designed for blind and low-vision athletes. (Goalball uses a hard ball with bells and taped string to orient players while they are trying to score or defend their goal.) They explain the drills in the curriculum and how to put together, use, and maintain the sports wheelchairs that the department provides for three weeks at a time.

Kelley says the feedback has been great so far. Several teachers have commented that the kids are disappointed when the U-M ASF staff come to pick up the adaptive equipment. One class in particular loved wheelchair basketball so much that they asked if they could do a scrimmage against the U-M wheelchair basketball team, so Kelley and co. brought some of their adaptive athletes into the school’s PE class for a game with the students.

Funders and potential partners are paying attention, too. Kelley and the rest of the ASF team recently secured additional internal funds for the program, known as the Adaptive Sports and Inclusive Recreation Initiative (ASIRI). This will allow the department to hire two additional staff members to support the initiative and expand into seventh- and eighth-grade gym classes and, eventually, Ypsilanti schools. In the future, the team hopes to grow on a national scale through a budding partnership with Move United, a longstanding nonprofit dedicated to expanding adaptive sports in communities across the country.

“Chris has been instrumental in the success of ASIRI specifically, and the ASF program in general,” says Dr. O.  “The knowledge he brings due to the combination of his educational background, lived experience, and connections within the adaptive sport community has been a welcome addition to the team.”

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Kelley says it’s cool to look back on the growth since he first applied to SoK’s sport management program and started working on a part-time basis with U-M Adaptive Sports & Fitness. Back then, they weren’t sure if they would have grant funding for ASIRI or even whether they could offer the program in person given the pandemic. They were just starting to hold tournaments for collegiate athletes.

And now? In the summer, Kelley and crew spoke with an estimated 200 youth adaptive athletes and their parents at Move United’s national competition.

“Right now, we’re trying to make our five-year strategic plan, and we don’t know what to write because we already surpassed our stretch goals in our last one,” Kelley says. “And we’re only going to continue to grow because there are still people who don’t know that adaptive sports exists at the University of Michigan or whose PE class doesn’t have ASIRI yet. There’s still so much room for development. It’s exciting.”