Disabled Don’t Have to Watch From Sidelines : Athletics: Orange County’s sports network provides a variety of opportunities, but it is not without some problems.

The 1976 skiing accident that left Brad Parks partially paralyzed and restricted him to a wheelchair id not paralyze his competitive spirit.

Since the accident, Parks has competed in road races, started the National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis and, most recently, has taken up golf.

Parks, who has been an athlete for much of his life, was eager to get back into sports after his accident, and he took advantage of the opportunities available to disabled athletes in Orange County.

But although Orange County’s disabled sports network does present a variety of opportunities, it is not without its problems.

“There are people who are very aggressive and if they want something they’ll do it,” Parks said. “They’ll make it happen. But of course there are a lot of other people who aren’t like that.”

Parks said the main problem was a lack of awareness of athletics for the disabled.

Brenda Premo of the Dale McIntosh Center for the disabled agreed. “The problem is that people don’t know how to get the information,” Premo said. “We receive in our center between 300 and 500 calls a day and I’d say that a good 20% of those are (asking) about sports-related activities.”

Local Special Olympics organizer Madeline Evens cited another concern. “I think my biggest problem is transportation,” Evens said. “The program is there. The challenge is to have someone bring them to it.”

Transportation is a bigger problem in south Orange County, where fewer programs are based, says Teri Mountford of the Orange County Council on Recreation for the Disabled.

Those involved in local athletics for the disabled agree that there are opportunities. Most of the local junior colleges have adaptive physical education programs that include disabled sports.

Also, organizations such as the National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis, the United States Assn. for Blind Athletes and the Special Olympics specialize in providing athletic opportunities for the disabled.

The Par Center in Irvine, a rehabilitative center for people with muscular or skeletal injuries, provides special services for disabled athletes. Gary Jarvis of the Par Center said that their “simulation center” is a place where patients can be observed going through the motions of different sports and have their fitness needs evaluated.

Jarvis said sports medicine is also available to Par Center patients to help them deal with the shoulder, arm and wrist injuries that often plague wheelchair competitors. The medical examinations are given, according to Jarvis, in wheelchair accessible examination rooms.

Accessible facilities are provided at several public swimming pools and also at some tennis facilities, including the Racquet Club of Irvine.

But although the facilities exist, disabled sports organizers complain of a shortage of structured programs of day-to-day practice and supervised training.

Of his National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis, Parks said, “Our emphasis is on organizing tournaments and clinics on a national level.”

Wheelchair tennis is taught at most of Orange County’s community colleges.

Most of those colleges also teach wheelchair basketball and provide facilities for teams. Although most of those teams recruit for the most skilled wheelchair-bound athletes, Orange Coast College has a ‘B’ team for beginning players.

But, said Parks, “The only way to know about those teams is to know somebody on those teams.”

Similar complaints are voiced by others involved in sports for the disabled.

Jim Stark’s son, Mike, has cerebral palsy. Mike Stark participates in a disabled children’s athletic program every Saturday at the Rehabilitative Institute of Southern California in Orange. Jim Stark said he and his son “happened on (the program) by chance,” through people they met in another program in which Mike was participating.

In his experience, Jim Stark said, disabled sports programs are “few and far between.”

Dave Kiley of the Casa Colina Center for Rehabilitation in Pomona is considered by many to be an expert on recreation for the disabled in all of Southern California. Kiley says there are not enough of any kind of publicly funded programs--athletic, recreational or other--for the disabled.

“But don’t let me paint a bleak picture,” Kiley said. “In Southern California there’s so many opportunities for mainstreaming.”

And many of the disabled do participate in mainstream sports. Parks said the increasingly popular sport of wheelchair tennis is one of few competitive sports in which a paraplegic can compete against an able-bodied person.

Charles Buell used to coach wrestling at the California School for the Blind in Berkeley. Buell said the blind youths he coached did not have to be motivated to perform well against sighted wrestlers.

“It means even more to a handicapped person than it does to a regular athlete because they’ve been told over and over again, ‘You can’t do this. You can’t do that.’ And it means so much when you can do that,” Buell said.

“They realized it was an opportunity to show people what the blind can do . . . One thing I can tell you: a sighted kid hates . . . to lose to a blind kid.”

But mainstreaming does present problems. Loretta Whitelock’s 12-year-old daughter, Lindsay, who is developmentally disabled, participates in the Saturday program at the Rehabilitation Center of Southern California. Lindsay Whitelock also is mainstreamed into her school’s physical education programs.

“She’s at the bottom of the class,” Loretta Whitelock said. “The other kids make fun of her. Here (at the Rehabilitation Center) she can shine.”

Whitelock said disabled children easily can become very isolated, and the social aspects of disabled athletics are very important.

Parks agreed that meeting other disabled people is an important benefit of disabled sports. “If you’re somebody who’s just injured,” he said, “you can learn so much from somebody who’s been through it.”

Parks, the National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis’ second-ranked singles player, also cited the physical benefits of athletics for the disabled. “Sitting in a wheelchair can be pretty inactive and it can be very sedentary,” he said.