This year's college football season got off to a shaky start of the Crimson Tide. But a different group of athletes in Tuscaloosa is still basking in the thrill of victory. Alabama’s adapted tennis team won it latest national championship last April, and the women’s adapted basketball team is still basking in the glory of its latest national title. The Tuscaloosa campus has a group of student athletes that compete in wheelchairs in various sports. That includes adapted tennis.
Alabama has a lot to talk about...
“Adapted has had multiple Paralympians over the past couple of games,” said Coach Tyler McKay. He leads the Crimson Tide’s adapted Tennis team
“As they come back to the US, Los Angeles, in 2028 we have a number of players in multiple sports, track and field, tennis, basketball, that have chances to make the games as well,” said Coach McKay.
That includes McKay’s Tennis team with three championship titles,
“We really are, just like any other Alabama sport, trying to be high performance, trying to be the best,” said McKay.
“There’s really not a whole lot of differences between able bodied tennis and adaptive tennis,” said player Max Barbier
That’s Max Barbier. He spent four years of undergrad on the adapted tennis team. He says the only difference is that the ball can bounce twice during his matches…
“I think that for me, without tennis, I wouldn't be at Alabama, for sure, I wouldn't have had probably half the opportunities I've had in my life in the last, I'd say, four or five years so I would say that tennis was really a way of just opening up different parts of the world to me and just has given me to many opportunities so it means everything to me,” said Barbier.
And winning championships is nice too. Max says his favorite one was his last…
“I know last year we were kind of rebuilding, and there was just a lot of unknowns, and just we got a new coach and a lot of stuff. And I think that to be able to go from one year ago to where we are now, to be able to win a national championship was just really awesome to just kind of finish out my last full season here,” he said.
Despite the championship hardware, some teams here at Alabama admit that they don’t get the recognition that they deserve. Barbier commented that he definitely feels in the shadow but not because he plays an adaptive sport. He added a new perspective …
“I can say the same thing about a lot of the able-bodied sports too,” Barbier observed. “Like, I mean, like varsity tennis is in the shadows of football. That's just something that comes with it,” Barbier commented.
Proponents of adapted athletics say seeing people with disabilities is an everyday thing. But the public often doesn’t know about adapted sports or even see it as the same thing.
“At the same time, while I might not be getting the same credit that a football player might, I think that I know in the back of my head at the end of the day that I work my butt off to get everything that we that I've earned, and that this team's earned, and we've all worked hard. So, I think that as long as the game keeps growing and things keep progressing, and hopefully we get under the NCAA at some point and things progress, I think as long as we just keep our heads up and keep moving towards having a more equal opportunity as them, then everything's going to be fine,” Barbier said enthusiastically.
Barbier along with Coach McKay both hope to gain the respect aspect of the sport…
“I don't think there's a whole lot of the same amount of respect that wheelchair athletes get as the able-bodied level,” McKay said. “You go watch Alabama men's varsity tennis, and people are so amazed. And then I guess, you know, a lot of people don't, a lot of people don't know about wheelchair tennis, like a lot of people don't really just don't have a clue that it even exists at all.”
Max Barbier on the UA adapted tennis team puts it this way…
“I think people just need to acknowledge more the fact that these people work just as hard as anybody else,” he contended.
The next wrinkle involving collegiate sports is pay. The federal courts just approved a plan where schools can compensate athletes as much as twenty million dollars per school.Some football programs may cut back on walk on athletes. The University of Alabama also says adapted tennis is not considered an official NCAA sport. No word on how that may impact the pay issue one way or the other.
