Heidi Wachtel, the founder of Greater Than Three, is a senior at ACU, about to graduate with her degree in social work with a sports focus to work with adaptive athletes.
Wachtel was told she had a less than three percent chance of moving anything below her neck after sustaining a spinal cord injury. Four and a half years later, she has almost full mobility in her arms and some movement in her legs.
Wachtel felt called to start Greater Than Three because there were no adaptive sport opportunities in Abilene. Adaptive athletes had to travel to bigger cities like Dallas or Houston to have a community to compete with.
The focus is on people with spinal cord injury, spina bifida, or limb loss. Adaptive sports are highly competitive and follow mostly the same rules as regular sports. Wachtel’s main sport is paratriathlon. Instead of riding a regular two-wheeled bike, she rides a hand cycle since she is paralyzed from the chest down. Instead of running, she has a racing chair and uses her arms to move.
There are a lot of misconceptions and barriers that exist around disabled people being physically active, “It’s assumed that because you’re in a wheelchair that you can’t play sports. It’s assumed by a lot of people that if they see you in a chair, they just think you’ve always been in it or they think that you’re cognitively impaired,” said Wachtel.
Wachtel was a professional firefighter for 15 years before she broke her neck. She said she is the same person she was then. She was also a Division I track and cross country athlete, and still has the same desire to compete and be as active as she was before her accident, “We’re still competitive. When we played pickleball last time, we were out there in our chairs diving for balls and everything, just like everybody else,” said Wachtel.
Greater Than Three has grown considerably in the short months since it started. They’ve connected with people who love sports and had been looking for a community to fit into, but didn’t know adaptive sports were a thing, “A lot of people have jumped in and said, well, like, we didn’t even know this was a need. And now they realize it’s a need, we’ve been growing quickly with volunteers and community members,” said Wachtel.
Wachtel said one of the best ways to support Greater than Three is to get the word out to people who need to hear it. Isolation is a huge issue when you’ve had an accident and don’t know how to fit back into society. There are a lot of opportunities for people who have cognitive impairments, but not as many for those who have a physical impairment.
The equipment is expensive and unaffordable for most individuals, and insurance doesn’t cover any type of sports chair, so raising funds for Greater Than Three is crucial, “And then volunteer, come and participate, see what it’s about. You know, most of us are pretty independent, but we still need volunteers to help organize and come up with ideas and places to offer us their place for us to come and host events and things like that,” said Wachtel.
You can find more information and ways to connect on Greaterthanthreeoutreach.org and their Instagram, and Facebook. Their goal is to raise $10,000 during Abilene Gives.
