By Rogers Pitcock

Sean Kent secures himself in a specialized rugby wheelchair with help from his mother, Bonnie. She fastens his feet while he adjusts his belts. “If you can breathe, it’s not tight enough,” he jokes. 

In a rugby wheelchair, his center of gravity is much lower. The wheels are angled upward and shielded to protect from hits. After an adhesive spray is applied around the wheels, Kent’s mother helps wrap tape around his arms and puts his gloves on.  

At the Springdale recreation center, an indoor basketball court has been specially sanctioned for the Ozark Adaptive Sports Association, Kent’s nonprofit. For the last two years, OZASA has provided adaptive sports equipment and facilities to Northwest Arkansas. Along with rugby chairs, Kent has tennis chairs, basketball chairs, and hand cycles. 

Two more members arrive, Darryl Coit, a special education teacher from Fayetteville, and Cecil Brown, Kent’s personal trainer. Brown is a former strength and conditioning coach for the Arkansas Paralympic team. He struck up a friendship with Kent at a local park when he noticed him in his wheelchair practicing. Tonight, he is working with Kent to get him in shape for rugby.

Coit secures himself into a tennis chair while Brown goes to practice basketball on an adjacent court. Kent and Coit put cones up around the court and begin their drills. First are wheelchair orientation drills, then shooting and mobility drills. Wheelchair orientation functions as a warmup, where the athletes weave through a course of cones forwards and backwards. Shooting and passing are then practiced while doing the same drills.

“Low turnout tonight,” says Kent. After two hours of exercising, Kent’s mother helps him out of his chair. “Dad’s gonna have to re-tape your gloves,” she says. Replacing gloves is a regular occurrence. He goes through almost a roll of tape every practice. Kent uses mechanic gloves, finger tape to prevent blisters, and tractor tire inner tubes wrapped around his fists. “Everyone has their own set up,” he says as his mother scissors off his tape. “People like to put in cushions or extra restraints.” 

For those suffering from spinal cord injuries, like Sean Kent, maintaining an active lifestyle can be difficult. With OZASA, he hopes to strengthen independence through community sports. 

“The big goal is to create a facility that’s geared towards disabled athletics, both physical and developmental,” he says. “Once you have the space, the possibilities are endless.” 

Kent was paralyzed at age 25. While visiting friends in Oregon, he had a diving accident. “I went running into the Pacific Ocean and dove into a cresting wave. Right behind it was a sandbar. It was like going full speed into a wall,” he said. Still conscious and face-down in the water, Kent couldn’t flip himself back up. He could not move his legs. He knew not to panic, because if you panic you’re just going to inhale more water. He passed out and was later resuscitated on the beach.

Kent spent two weeks in Portland for surgery and observation. A medical flight took him from Portland to his hometown of Chicago, to the best rehab facility in the country. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, now called the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, would be where Kent spent the next six months. He had broken his C6 vertebrae, which limits mobility in the hands, triceps, and torso. Kent had to relearn how the hands and arms function. He had to learn how to eat again. 

“They didn’t have enough beds on the spinal cord floor. So they put me on the kids’ floor, and when I’m doing my therapy, I see a five year old that got meningitis and had to have their hands and feet amputated. If she can do this, I can do this,” Kent said. Other patients would shut down and lock themselves in their hospital rooms, not wanting to do their therapies, but Kent would take as much therapy as he could in the day.  

He suffered an incomplete spinal cord injury, meaning it wasn’t severed. He regained sensation back and some movement in his legs, but couldn’t feel pain at all on his left side from the chest down. Kent would spend his days in therapy. Physical therapy exercises leg mobility and fine motor skills while occupational therapy focused on daily living, where he learned how to feed and dress himself.

“When you look back on it, you go, ‘Wow this is the thing that got me. Out of all the crap I’ve done in my life, diving wrong is what got me,” he said. “If I would’ve dove five feet to the left I’d be fine.”

Kent says that the biggest personal obstacle people deal with is the loss of independence. The loss of function. Things that were once easy aren’t easy anymore. 

“Velcro is a real pain in the ass for me,” says Kent. “When your world and independence shrinks, it’s a lot to deal with. You wake up and shit doesn’t work. It takes years for people to get their confidence back. You do anything to get your mind off of it.”

While in Chicago, he was recommended the documentary Murderball by hospital staff. It is about wheelchair rugby, a quadriplegic-specific sport. It piqued Kent’s interest. His limited tricep mobility wouldn’t allow for wheelchair basketball, so after inpatient rehab , he decided to go to a wheelchair rugby practice.

Kent’s rugby team in Chicago consisted of other quadriplegics, veterans mainly, all with different function levels. “They’d tell me how to handle things and answer my questions,” he said. “Some guys’ hands work and others don’t. It feels better when your support group is more easygoing. Sports make it more natural. It builds a sense of camaraderie.” 

On the team, Kent was forced to live independently. Once a month, the team’s sponsor would pay for them to go to a tournament for a weekend. They’d cover the hotel and travel. Kent learned how to live without a wheelchair accessible room and how to handle the TSA, airports, and airplanes. He considered it to be therapy in and of itself.

“The best thing I did after my injury was sports,” Kent said. “When I was in rehab and they forced you to go to support groups, they had a therapist that would show up in my room and I’d try to fake like I was sleeping. The support groups were just people complaining and that’s no fun. People are just depressed. They think life is over, especially depending on your level of injury.” 

After years of planning and research, Kent moved down to Northwest Arkansas. He was attracted by the burgeoning economy, proximity to family, and the untapped market for adaptive sports. “I lucked out,” said Kent. “I know people that were abandoned by their families after their injuries and they are sent to nursing homes. My family was willing to be very supportive and helpful with this.” 

To continue playing rugby though, his closest team was in Kansas City, over 200 miles away. He made the drive to practice once a week for a year.  “Originally I tried making a wheelchair rugby team here in Arkansas, but after talking to others in the area, I learned that once the coach or captain quit or retired, nobody picked up after,” said Kent.

After seeing several adaptive sports institutions fail across the state of Arkansas, Kent started planning the Ozark Adaptive Sports Association. In December of 2019, he acquired his 501c3, which would allow him to start it as a nonprofit. During the initial outbreak of COVID, Kent used time to prepare and get equipment until April 2021.

Kent says the two biggest barriers for adaptive sports are equipment and transportation. “Basketball chairs, rugby chairs, and hand cycles cost thousands of dollars each, so it’s not like people who want to play adaptive sports can just hop in and try it out.” Basketball chairs are lighter and sit higher to allow easier shooting and rebounding. Wheelchair rugby is the only full contact wheelchair sport. “We break our necks and then spend thousands of dollars running into each other,” he said. “I’ve only flipped over three or four times.”

 As an organization trying to appeal to people with injuries, OZASA wants to fit in as many activities as they can. Basketball chairs are universal in paripeleigc sports, so they play basketball, tennis, pickleball, softball, and wheelchair lacrosse to name a few. Rugby chairs cover the quadrepelegic sports, and hand cycles allow for outdoor racing.

Cycling is what attracted Darryl Coit to OZASA. Coit was injured in a car accident and went to the same rehab facility as Kent. He enjoys playing tennis and basketball but primarily cycles. “I wouldn’t live here if it weren’t for the trails,” he says. He recently moved from California and cites Northwest Arkansas’s cycling potential as his motivation to exercise.

“Northwest Arkansas is a very cycle-friendly area, and we want to take advantage of that,” says Kent. “So for anybody able-bodied or disabled, come and try it out on Wednesday nights. Mostly we offer basketball and rugby because Springdale Parks and Rec has been phenomenal in letting us rent a court once a week.” The goal for OZASA is to travel and play other teams competitively, nationally or regionally like in Chicago and Kansas City. The Ozark Adaptive Sports Association currently meets weekly at the Springdale recreation center. Most of OZASA’s athletes are from the area. “I’ve had contact with people from Oklahoma, Fort Smith, and Bella Vista,” said Kent. “Ideally, our range is a 90 mile radius around Springdale. We have a social media presence, but adaptive sports is an institution where if you’re not looking for it, you usually won’t find out about it. My strategy has been getting into contact with rehab facilities, hospitals, and medical vendors; giving them brochures and information.” 

 Arkansas is unique in that it has the Arkansas Spinal Cord Commission, a branch of the department of human services which keeps track of where disabled people are who need state assistance. Kent uses the commission to help identify new recruits for OZASA. 

 According to the CDC and Arkansas Spinal Cord commission, 12-15% of Arkansans are under the age of 65 with a disability. The number one causes of spinal cord injuries in Arkansas are car accidents. Kent uses this information to find people willing to try OZASA.

“Starting an adaptive sports program in Arkansas has been challenging, but if something like this existed, I wouldn’t have the chance to do it,” says Kent. “It’s the time to do it here. The programs like this help people build their confidence back but they have to want to do it. People lose hope after their injury and we’re trying to show them lifes not done. Come out and do these activities, come out and feel independent again. OZASA requires tenacity to just want to do it.” 

Under Kent’s leadership, OZASA has become more than premier recreation and sports, but a support group, uplifting the disabled community of Arkansas.