Tennis, anyone?

In my teenage years, I found a love for tennis. I found a tennis pro in Oceanside, N.Y. who taught others in wheelchairs and went for lessons. I also used my time in gym class to focus on tennis skills.
 

It was neat to not have to do any of the normal stuff in gym (well, in a chair, one couldn't really do all the normal stuff). I actually looked forward to gym.

Tennis in a wheelchair is great. It is one of the few sports you can play against able-bodied people. As a quad (quadriplegic), I am allowed two bounces to return the ball, other than that, all the other rules are the same.

With all of these lessons and practice, I became quite good (imagine that!). What was I to do with all this skill? Well, it turns out that there were quite a few tennis tourneys around locally and nationally. I entered and traveled to different places around the US for tournaments. I played in Flushing, NY, at the US Open site which was really cool. I even met Ed Koch there one year. I also played in a tournament near New Haven, CT, which is where I was first given the nick-name "Walking-Talking Quad". Another multi-day tournament brought me out to the west coast to Costa Mesa, CA.

Pictured here, I am in my first chair (prior to the yellow rigid chair I still have now and just recently replaced with the K2). It was a sporty fold up style chair. I had a metal bar added to the push handles in back to give it some rigidity. It did not however come with enough batteries to power these pants which appear to be brighter than the tennis ball!

Song to accompany today's blog post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB2f6-U72Zk