Running is for everyone: Achilles International Athletes on Why Inclusion Matters

In honor of Disability Pride Month, we’re highlighting an organization that supports athletes with disabilities across the globe. This article was originally published on August 7, 2020.

“Don’t listen to the people who tell you you can’t do things,” says Matt Davis. Born with spina bifida, Davis has used a wheelchair and lived an active lifestyle since he was a kid. Now an elite wheelchair racer, he mentors other athletes to push their boundaries at the Nashville, Tennessee, chapter of Achilles International.

Achilles is an organization that uses athletic programs and social connection to transform the lives of people with disabilities across the globe. Together with volunteer guides, Achilles athletes pursue endurance goals through running. In the Achilles circle, running is the term used to include any form of forward locomotion, like conventional running, walking, wheeling, or swinging through crutches.

Achilles programs aim to enhance self-esteem and lower barriers to living a fulfilled life, and have served over 150,000 athletes in over 70 chapters around the world, in the U.S. and 24 other countries, since 1983.

Read Fleet Feet’s interview with CEO and President, Emily Glasser, and Achilles athletes Theresa Khayyam and Lupita Hernandez here.

Fleet Feet sat down for a second round of Zoom interviews with three athletes from the Nashville chapter of Achilles who champion accessibility and inclusivity for individuals with disabilities. We talked about their personal journeys in athletics, thoughts on the Americans with Disabilities Act and why inclusivity matters in sports and in life.

Professionally, Davis is the Assistant Director of the Student Accessibility Resource Center at Western Kentucky University, where he helps students learn to push their boundaries and advocate for themselves.

Davis has a long list of racing accomplishments, but he says he is most proud of his opportunity to teach others and watch them achieve their goals, whether they are his students at WKU or the young wheelchair racers he mentors through Achilles Nashville.

Like Davis, Saffell uses her profession to empower others and pass on the life lessons she has learned. She is the executive director of ABLE Youth, a program that uses adaptive sports to help kids with physical disabilities learn to be independent.

“I see myself in them all the time,” she says. “You never know how far you can go, and I can give them a real example of how far they can come with hard work.”

The Americans with Disabilities ACT, or ADA recently reached its 30th anniversary. How has ADA affected the accessibility of our country?

“To me it means the possibility to live a full life,” says Saffell. “I’m old enough to remember when (the ADA) passed and the transformation things have taken in accessibility since then. I was a kid, but I do remember. When I was younger it was a struggle to find access into buildings, or to find a wheelchair-accessible bathroom stall. There were a lot of challenges.”

When it comes to human connection, the concept of inclusion runs deeper than ramps and bathroom stalls. “With non-wheelchair-accessible buildings, you have a separation of people,” Saffell says. “If people with disabilities can’t get into a building, people who don’t have disabilities won’t see them as much. So, they go and make friends, or make decisions on who to hire for a job, for example.”

If you don’t have experience with people with disabilities, you’re less likely to make decisions for inclusion, Saffell says.

“I think we as a society have taken the first step to being accessible,” Solomon says. “But we need a second, third step.” She says a more inclusive building design would have one accessible entrance for everyone rather separate entrances for wheelchair users and the able-bodied.

Davis says having an inclusive mindset means thinking about things from another person’s perspective to be sure their needs are met. He says the overall view goes beyond just accommodations.

“It’s more a feeling of being a part of something,” he says. “I think that’s what drew me to Achilles. Feeling a part of something good not just for myself but for everybody that participates.”