Published Friday, July 21, 2009<\/p>\n
Hoadley Mitchell was six when he was hit by a car, causing damage to the right side of his brain and partial paralysis to the left side of his body. By the time Hoadley was a teenager he\u2019d had more than twenty operations. Hoadley says \u201cit slowed me down a bit but not much.\u201d Hoadley has tried numerous adaptive sports and competed as a swimmer in the 2003 Kelowna BC Disability Games. This year Hoadley is competing as a golfer in the BC Disability Games in Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge.<\/p>\n
Hoadley\u2019s support worker, Gary, explains that \u201csix years ago we were focused on training in swimming and only golfed periodically and then it was fall and we were focused on skiing and it wasn\u2019t until the next year that we became more serious about golf.\u201d Once the focus switched to golf it stayed there.<\/p>\n
Hoadley uses a training grip on his clubs \u201cbecause his left hand has a tendency to curl inward due to atrophying muscles and with regular clubs he can\u2019t get a good grip. A training grip has ridges and wedges that force his hand to be in a particular position and it greatly helps his swing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those who golf understand the need to constantly go back to the greens to improve upon past scores, develop their skills, and refine their game. As Hoadley Mitchell puts it \u201cit\u2019s a great sport for all ages and all people and the more you do it the more you want to do it.\u201d What is often overshadowed by the challenge of the game is the connections created through the shared love of golf. It has been these connections that have helped to remove barriers that might otherwise have kept Hoadley from the fairways.<\/p>\n
For Hoadley the adaptions which are necessary for him to play golf are not physical but attitudinal. \u201cHoadley walks with a gait because after all the operations his left side was quite hampered so he walks about 60% of what an average person would walk in terms of speed, efficiency, and balance.\u201d At some courses a certain pace is expected by management and other golfers and exceptions are not made. Luckily, Hoadley and Gary are members of the Aspen Grove Golf Course in Winfield and \u201cthe support of the owners, previous and current, and that of the fellow golfers has made a real difference to Hoadley\u2019s ability to play without barriers. The other patrons have been extremely kind, patient, friendly and receptive. That, unfortunately, is not something that you get everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also, the employer\u2019s of Gary, the Lifestyle Equity Society, a non-profit society in Kelowna, have removed the financial barrier of a membership for Gary. \u201cThey do everything they can to accommodate us and the people we support and they made special allotments in their budget to get me a golf pass each year. I\u2019m very grateful to them because they don\u2019t have a huge amount of money to throw around but they always make sure there is room in the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hoadley\u2019s and Gary\u2019s appreciation of the support of Lifestyle Equity Society and the staff and players at Aspen Grove is because \u201cnot many places take that attitude and the help was done for very compassionate reasons not for business reasons. They did it just to be good and to be fair and that kind of action deserves recognition. Any person who removes obstacles deserves thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
They also add that they hope that \u201cmaybe Aspen Grove could become a place for other people with obstacles to come to golf if they knew that that is the atmosphere there.\u201d After all, regardless of ability or barriers, once a golfer, always a golfer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Published Friday, July 21, 2009 Hoadley Mitchell was six when he was hit by a car, causing damage to the right side of his brain and partial paralysis to the left side of his body. By the time Hoadley was a teenager he\u2019d had more than twenty operations. Hoadley says \u201cit slowed me down a\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":134,"menu_order":30,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-254","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4glPx-46","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canbc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canbc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canbc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canbc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canbc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canbc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"https:\/\/canbc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/254\/revisions\/255"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canbc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canbc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}