In today’s world, there’s often a stigma that the world of sports is closed to people with disabilities, but that is not the case.  There are many organizations that support athletes with disabilities, such as USA Volleyball.

During this brand new episode of Family Comes First™, “Going for Gold”, we hear from Paralympic gold medalist, Lora Webster.  Lora won her gold medal in Rio at the 2016 games for sitting volleyball. 

Lora experienced some knee pain when she was younger and soon after, found out she had a tumor.  At 11 years old, the doctors gave her the choice of which surgery she would like to get rid of the tumor and live with for the rest of her life.

Lora being an active child, never gave up on sports, even after the surgery.  When she was scouted for sitting volleyball in high school, Lora was weary at first, then she realized how challenging the sport was and decided she was up for the task.  “…people believe that it’s a watered-down version of the regular able-bodied sport when in fact, most adaptive sports are much harder than able-bodied sports.”

Later on the show, Bill Hamiter, the Director of sitting volleyball joins us via Skype.  Bill reports that the biggest obstacle for Paralympic athletes is “probably the amount of time that they have to train in relation to job, family, those types of things because they usually aren’t supported as well as some of our Olympic counterparts…”

Before we conclude the show, Lora leaves us with an encouraging message, “…even if something bad happens to you, that doesn’t mean that life ends, nor does it mean that you can’t go back to living a life that you were living beforehand. And a lot of times, the opportunities that have opened up to a lot of my teammates were something that they never could have imagined if their illness, or tragedy or whatever didn’t happen to them.  I know that I would never wish my life on a different path.”

You do not want to miss this show! Tune in to Telecare on Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 10:30 pm to watch this brand new inspirational episode of Family Comes First™. In case you miss it, each episode also airs on Wednesdays at 1:30 pm, Fridays at 1:30 pm and Mondays at 9:30 am.

We invite you to watch and be inspired! Family Comes First™ airs exclusively on Telecare TV – Cablevision channels 29 and 137; Verizon FiOS TV channel 296; or Charter Spectrum channels 162 and 471.