Some parents skeptical of 'special needs' school vouchers

MADISON (WRN)  The governor’s proposal to create a school choice voucher program for special needs students doesn’t sit well with everyone.

Under Governor Scott Walker’s education plan, more money would be invested in private school vouchers for special needs students, but not for public schools. Parents of kids with special needs gathered at the Capitol Monday with the group Stop Special Needs Vouchers to urge Governor Walker to reconsider.

Kimberly Nerone of Wauwatosa knows first hand how, together with the protections of IDEA and IEP, children with special needs can find success in their public schools. “In Wisconsin we need to be improving our already strong public schools for students who have disabilities, and not chip away at them with these special needs vouchers. Please, remove the special needs voucher program from the state budget.”

Melissa Stoltz of Beloit says while public schools are required to accept all students, regardless of severity of any disability, voucher schools would have no obligation to accept any given student. “Special needs vouchers would go to students with milder disabilities that are more easily accommodated, leaving students with more moderate and severe disabilities and neighborhood schools drained of funding for shared resources such as therapists and special education teachers.”

Melissa says families who use special needs vouchers forfeit their parent and student rights and protections guaranteed in public schools by the individuals with disabilities education act. She says, “Such a wide-reaching policy change affecting some of our most vulnerable students deserves a statewide public debate in a full public hearing in a standing education committee.”

Sarah Herron's disability is advantage on 'Bachelor'

Of all the women Bachelor Sean Lowe could have picked for his first one-on-one date, he chose Sarah Herron, 25, an ad exec from Colorado who was born with only one full arm.

Herron, one of 16 women still in the running for Lowe's heart, said in a press call today that, yes, maybe her disability, the result of a birth defect, has given her an advantage.

"It helped me stand out and catch his attention, and I'm grateful for that."

She says, "I think what happened is I introduced myself to Sean and made an impression and he saw me as a unique, strong, courageous individual and that I deserved this opportunity as much as anybody else." It made her feel, she says, "like the most lucky girl in the world."

And their date was no picnic, although they had one afterward. The two jumped off a skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles, doing a free-fall for 300 feet. Although we saw her screaming as it happened, she said today it was "cool" and "adventurous."

The decision to come on the show has been an adventure, too, admits Herron. "I was nervous. I knew I was putting myself out there and I knew America was going to see me in my most vulnerable state."

But she "decided to bite the bullet and apply" after seeing Lowe, 29, on Emily Maynard's season of The Bachelorette. "I was really interested in him. He's incredibly attractive."

When she was accepted for the show, she says, "It was kind of this dream come true. I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around it."

Now, she has become something of a role model. "I've been doing a little reading of comments online and on some message boards. It seems to be incredibly positive and I get overwhelming feedback from women saying I've inspiring them and motivated them." She continues, "I truthfully went on the show to meet Sean, but if I'm a role model for anybody, I'm honored that people perceive me like that."

Sarah Herron and Sean Lowe toast each other on 'The Bachelor.'(Photo: Todd Wawrychuk, ABC)

It wasn't something she had thought about. "I was worried about Sean liking me. I was never was concerned what the public was going to say or people were going to say. I've grown up with it my whole life. I'm not concerned about being talked about."

Lowe, she says, immediately put her at ease about everything. "Here's the thing, I think most women have their insecurities whether it's your weight or your style or the color of your hair. Everybody has something about them that they don't feel awesome about. For me, my barrier is having one arm."

She brought it up with Lowe on the first night they met and, she says, "It was important for me to let him know everything that I could ... and be open and honest." And, she adds, "He made it clear he was comfortable and we could just move on."

Herron says the Bachelor women, who can get pretty catty as they compete, were also "very, very, very sweet. The girls were welcoming and encouraging, and immediately just bonded with me so well. I feel like it's very strange how close I got with the girls and they all just wanted me to succeed and do well."

So far, anyway.

And if she doesn't end up with Sean, who's a good match for him? "I honestly really think Lesley M.," says Herron, referring to the 25-year-old political consultant whose hometown is Fort Smith, Ark. "I think she's a wonderful girl with a great career and she's beautiful and has an amazing body and she's so cool. I really see this great spark happening between them. I think Lesley M. is a possible contender."

But stay tuned, Herron says. "The next episode is going to be a pretty big shocker. There's a lot of drama that happens next Monday night. It's going to be interesting to see how it all unfolds. We're all finally settled into the house and seeing true colors come out, and I think things are going to start to get interesting."

Schools must provide sports for disabled, US says

Disabled students could join traditional teams if officials can make "reasonable modifications" to accommodate them

BY PHILIP ELLIOTT, ASSOCIATED PRESS

(Credit: AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Students with disabilities must be given a fair shot to play on a traditional sports team or have their own leagues, the Education Department says.

Disabled students who want to play for their school could join traditional teams if officials can make “reasonable modifications” to accommodate them. If those adjustments would fundamentally alter a sport or give the student an advantage, the department is directing the school to create parallel athletic programs that have comparable standing to traditional programs.

“Sports can provide invaluable lessons in discipline, selflessness, passion and courage, and this guidance will help schools ensure that students with disabilities have an equal opportunity to benefit from the life lessons they can learn on the playing field or on the court,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement announcing the new guidance Friday.

The groundbreaking order is reminiscent of the Title IX expansion of athletic opportunities for girls and women four decades ago and could bring sweeping changes to school budgets and locker rooms for years to come.

Activists cheered the changes.

“This is a landmark moment for students with disabilities. This will do for students with disabilities what Title IX did for women,” said Terri Lakowski, who for a decade led a coalition pushing for the changes. “This is a huge victory.”

It’s not clear whether the new guidelines will spark a sudden uptick in sports participation. There was a big increase in female participation in sports after Title IX guidance instructed schools to treat female athletics on par with male teams. That led many schools to cut some men’s teams, arguing that it was necessary to be able to pay for women’s teams.

Education Department officials emphasized they did not intend to change sports traditions dramatically or guarantee students with disabilities a spot on competitive teams. Instead, they insisted schools may not exclude students based on their disabilities if they can keep up with their classmates.

Federal laws, including the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, require states to provide a free public education to all students and prohibit schools that receive federal money from discriminating against students with disabilities. Going further, the new directive from the Education Department’s civil rights division explicitly tells schools and colleges that access to interscholastic, intramural and intercollegiate athletics is a right.

The department suggests minor accommodations to incorporate students with disabilities onto sports teams. For instance, track and field officials could use a visual cue for a deaf runner to begin a race.

Some states already offer such programs. Maryland, for instance, passed a law in 2008 that required schools to create equal opportunities for students with disabilities to participate in physical education programs and play on traditional athletic teams. And Minnesota awards state titles for disabled student athletes in six sports.

Increasingly, those with disabilities are finding spots on their schools’ teams.

“I heard about some of the other people who joined their track teams in other states. I wanted to try to do that,” said Casey Followay, 15, of Wooster, Ohio, who competes on his high school track team in a racing wheelchair.

Current rules require Followay to race on his own, without competitors running alongside him. He said he hopes the Education Department guidance will change that and he can compete against runners.

“It’s going to give me the chance to compete against kids at my level,” he said.

Some cautioned that progress would come in fits and starts initially.

“Is it easy? No,” said Brad Hedrick, director of disability services at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and himself a hall-of-famer in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. “In most places, you’re beginning from an inertial moment. But it is feasible and possible that a meaningful and viable programming can be created.”

A Child With Down Syndrome Keeps His Place at the Table

By GEORGE ESTREICH

IT’S rare that our daily lives adhere to dramatic form. But as reported onToday.com/Moms (“Waiter hailed as hero after standing up for boy with Down syndrome”), among other places, a little morality play took shape a few days ago in a Houston restaurant.

According to the Today.com article, the Castillo family — Eric, Kim and their 5-year-old son, Milo, who has Down syndrome — were having dinner at Laurenzo’s Prime Rib when a family nearby asked to be seated elsewhere.

As the waiter, Michael Garcia, recounted to the NBC affiliate KPRC-TV in Houston: “I heard the man say, ‘Special needs children need to be special somewhere else.’ My personal feelings took over, and I told him, ‘I’m not going to be able to serve you, sir.’ ”

“ ‘How could you say that?’ ” Mr. Garcia said he asked the man before he left the restaurant. “ ‘How could you say that about a beautiful 5-year-old angel?’ ”

For many people, this will be a simple feel-good story. But as the father of an 11-year-old girl with Down syndrome, I found the story more complicated. Beyond its satisfying ending, you can learn a lot about the conflicted place of Down syndrome in the world. The casual insensitivity of the patron’s remark, while not always expressed this blatantly, is all too common. And whether you call Mr. Garcia a hero or not, he unquestionably did the right thing, and his kind of bravery makes an enormous difference in the lives of people with disabilities.

As Ms. Castillo pointed out, he put his job on the line. Even more inspiring, he knew the Castillo family, who are regulars at the restaurant, and he acted in the name of connection, denying the very separation — between “special” and “normal” — that the unidentified patron implied.

Ms. Castillo’s characterization of her son also stood out because it broke through the prescribed roles of the story. Her description is loving and positive, yet she emphasizes ordinary qualities as well as angelic ones. She said her son likes to give hugs, but is also occasionally “obnoxious which, like any other 5-year-old, he can be.”

She also noted that Milo has friends “both with and without Down syndrome.” That detail stayed with me, not only because it is true to my experience but also because it suggests how far we’ve come. The history of disability in our country is mostly tragic. During decades of routine institutionalization and sterilization, a shared preschool — let alone friendship, or being a valued regular customer at a Houston restaurant —was not on the table. If there were a slogan for those grim decades, “let them be special somewhere else” would sum things up pretty well.

Most of the progress for children with Down syndrome in the United States — their right to go to school, for instance — is recent and gained momentum, in part, from a recognition that “somewhere else” often meant an institutional horror no human being should ever have to experience. Geraldo Rivera’s 1972 hidden-camera exposé of the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island was instrumental in showing exactly how grim conditions could be. That exposé was one small part of a tidal change in which advocates for the disabled inspired by the civil rights movement, committed parents and others fought for the things that today’s parents take for granted. When our daughter Laura was born, my wife and I often wondered about the future. But we did not wonder whether she would be allowed to go to kindergarten.

Our advances, however, are still a work in progress. While it’s true that open bigotry is less common than it used to be, the absence of direct hostility is not the same as the absence of ignorance. The word “retard” is common in the schoolyard and on our screens: while our taboos about difference shift with incredible speed, slurs about intellectual disability often get a pass. From the movies “Tropic Thunder” to “The Hangover,” from Rahm Emanuel to Ann Coulter, “retard” still tends to be seen as edgy, not bigoted. Of course, the issues in question transcend labels: in the Houston restaurant, the word “special” was used as an insult, which only testifies to the resilience of prejudice. Any word can be repurposed for contempt.

What is it about intellectual disability that we find so difficult? Sometimes it seems our focus on “positive” qualities, like being “cute” or “happy” or “sweet,” is meant to compensate for disability. We’re a long way from seeing all human beings as part of a single continuum. We also, it has to be said, do a lot better with children than adults — perhaps because historically we imagine adults with Down syndrome as children. A child with Down syndrome may have a place at the table, but adults are a different matter. In housing and employment, their place is uncertain; the recent scandal in New York State with rampant, unchecked abuse in group homes should give pause to anyone who thinks that our American history with disability has come to a happy ending.

It’s moving to me that Milo Castillo’s story takes place in a restaurant, given the civil rights history of lunch counters and water fountains. What’s a more visceral expression of belonging than where we’re allowed to eat? Where else would manners and rights intersect? As presented in the television report, the opinion voiced by the unidentified patron — “be special somewhere else” — is seen as a shocking instance of rudeness. It is. But more significantly, it’s the sentiment that, when widespread, makes it possible for people to lose rights in the first place.

Dehumanizing practices depend on dehumanizing ideas. Instead of seeing the scene in the restaurant as a story with a heroic resolution, we might see it as a debate carried out in words and actions. Taking a kid with Down syndrome to a restaurant is a statement: he’s a family member first, and he belongs. Saying that the kid shouldn’t be there, as the patron did, is one response; Mr. Garcia’s principled refusal to provide service is yet another. That scene, tidy as it is, is only one part of a long American conversation about who does and doesn’t belong.

Beneath the human interest story, in other words, is a question about who counts as human. For parents of children with Down syndrome like me, every daily act is an answer. What I live for, though, is the day when the question doesn’t come up.

Medicaid Long-Term Services and Supports, and Home and CommunityBased Services: The Changing Landscape

Healthcare and LTSS mechanisms and financing for low-income people with disabilities of all ages have been undergoing significant changes in recent years. States are increasingly requiring that Medicaid beneficiaries with disabilities and seniors mandatorily enroll in managed care with the dual goals of cost saving and improved health outcomes.
The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) authorized a multistate demonstration to enroll people who are dually eligible for Medicare and full Medicaid benefits in managed care plans. Some of the demonstrations will also transition LTSS services into the managed care system. Slated to begin in 2013 in some states, the demonstrations aim to generate savings as well as address the gaps and instances of financial and service misalignment between Medicare and Medicaid. Moreover, beginning in 2014, the ACA will expand Medicaid to cover millions of low income, uninsured individuals, including many with disabilities. Some states that participate in the expansion will likely require
that these new Medicaid beneficiaries also enroll in managed care.
(Read the FULL story here)

Treaty for the disabled falls short of ratification

By Bobby Caina Calvan , Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- Senator John Kerry made an impassioned but ultimately futile plea for ratifying a treaty aimed at advancing the rights of the blind and disabled across the globe, urging Congress to do for the world what has already been accomplished in the United States to protect Americans with disabilities.

In the end, Kerry and other supporters fell five votes short of the 66 needed for ratification of the international pact known as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities -- hailed by advocates as a human rights effort to transform how nations across the world treat those with long-term physical, mental and intellectual impairments, particularly children who face a future of bleakness because of their disabilities.

“We will keep fighting till we win for disabled, vets,” Kerry tweeted after the vote.

It was a clear disappointment for the senior senator from Massachusetts who pushed the bill as an extension of the work of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, a champion for expanding rights for the disabled and a co-sponsor of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act, which served as a model for the treaty.

“This is not about politics, it is not about ideology,” Kerry said on the Senate floor before the vote. “It’s about people.”

Raise Your Voice
Click to contact candidates or elected officials about this issue.The treaty had already been approved by the European Union and 125 countries, including China and Russia.

Eight Republicans, including Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and the Senate’s two independents joined Democrats in voting 61-38 in favor of ratification. The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate for a treaty to be ratified.

Proponents argued that the treaty would help further advance rights for the disabled, including Americans already protected by the landmark anti-discrimination law but who, under the treaty, would benefit from barriers falling across the world.

The treaty was supported by President George W. Bush, who helped negotiate it and whose father, President George H. Bush, signed the ADA into law in 1990. The United States became a signatory to the treaty in 2009 under President Obama, a move signaling the country’s intent to ratify the agreement.

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, looking frail and requiring a wheelchair, returned to the chamber on Tuesday in a symbolic show of support for the treaty.

Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and staunch supporter of the treaty, read from a letter written by Dole.

But McCain’s fellow Republican from Arizona, Senator Jon Kyl, helped defeat the bill.

“Just as with many treaties before this one, the CRPD would offer cover to regimes that have no intention of actually helping their citizens, while needlessly tying the hands of countries like the United States that have actually made great strides in this area,” Kyl said in a floor speech.

Kyl said the treaty would be toothless in forcing countries to adopt measures that would reduce the physical barriers that keep the disabled from having the same access to public facilities as able-bodied people.

Last week, former Senator Rick Santorum convened a news conference to take issue with wording in the treaty alluding to reproductive rights, which some conservatives take as code for abortion. Santorum and other opponents say the treaty risked the usurping of US sovereignty and the rights of parents with disabled children.

In a statement released by his office after the vote, Kerry called the vote one of the saddest in his 28 years in the Senate, “a wakeup call about a broken institution that’s letting down the American people.”

“Today the dysfunction hurt veterans and the disabled, and that’s unacceptable. This treaty was supported by every veterans group in America and Bob Dole made an inspiring and courageous personal journey back to the Senate to fight for it,” Kerry said.

Veterans, many maimed in combat, joined business groups, advocates for the disabled, and a few high-profile Republicans in attempting to change enough minds among a solid bloc of GOP members who thwarted passage of the bill because of concerns over abortion, US sovereignty, and timing.

“I could not sleep tonight if I were one of the senators who did not vote for this today,” said Steve Rothstein, president of the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, which is working in 67 countries to better the lives of the blind by building schools, training teachers, and advocating for civil rights of the sight-impaired. Some 4.5 million children worldwide, he said, don’t go to school because they are blind.

“It’s embarrassment for our country, which has been such a leader in disability rights,” Rothstein added. “Many counties don’t believe in the value of all human beings.”

Rhonda Neuhaus, who was born without legs, wept as the vote was tallied. “I’m angry, and I’m very sad,” said Neuhaus, who attended Brandeis University and is now a policy analyst at the Washington-based Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

“Today, the irrational and outrageous opposition of a bloc of Republican senators denied Senate ratification of the CRPD, betraying the US’s historic role as a global leader in fighting discrimination and opening doors of opportunity for people with disabilities,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Paralympist Muffy Davis on dreams and being your very best

A ski accident changed Muffy Davis’ life, but it didn’t derail her Olympic dreams. She brought home three gold medals in the summer London Paralympics, and now she’s a role model for everyone to do their very best, as well as for those with disabilities — and with dreams. Those are lessons she wants to teach her daughter, Elle, 4, and the rest of the world. “Your body may be broken, but who you are is whole and shines — and to share that and give that inspiration and hope.”

Katherine Jones — Katherine Jones / Idaho Statesma

She rolls her wheelchair into a room.

She says: “Instantly, the people who don’t know me, the first thing that comes across their minds is what I can’t do.

“And that’s what I’m trying to change.”

Muffy Davis reaches behind her wheelchair and pulls out a nondescript black pack. Nestled in the bag is a collection of medals: bronze, silver and gold. Each medal has a certain heft to it; none more so than the gold. Especially the gold. It has a certain — presence.

The medals don’t stay in the bag, nor do they reside in a safety deposit box. When she speaks to groups of schoolchildren, she brings them all along and passes them around, one at a time.

“I want people to wear them, to know what it feels like. … That’s the value for me … sharing (them), letting people feel the power of the medal.

“And then going and finding their own (dream).”

When Muffy was an 8-year-old skier in Sun Valley, she was already planning her Olympic future. And while the medals she now holds originate in that childhood determination, her path ended up being far different than what she imagined.

“I was an Olympic hopeful, but I am a Paralympic medalist. Who knows if I would have made it to the Olympics? I was a hopeful; it might not have happened. But I know what I am now: I am a Paralympic gold medalist.”

In her teens, Muffy was on the U.S. Development ski team, about to be named to the U.S. Ski Team (along with teammate Picabo Street). But that all changed when she was 16, on a curve at 50 mph, during a routine training run.

“You often wonder what you would have been, but I have a great life. I’ve done everything I’ve ever wanted to do — and more than I ever thought I would do.”

The first tree she hit crushed her spine. The second tree shattered her helmet. In the hospital, when doctors asked her to wiggle her toes, she couldn’t.

“I have been blessed that I never had to change my dreams or my goals because of my disability. ... Sports is a passion in my life. That was my first initial fear when I had my accident. … I learned that was an unfounded fear, and I can still do everything I love.”

Muffy, 39, is paralyzed from the middle of her ribs down. After the crash, she channeled her competitive energy into therapy. She laughs, remembering how she’d turn physical therapy into a race — like her three-minute “9-yard dash” in braces. Convinced she would walk again, initially, she declined the idea of adaptive skiing.

But then it snowed, and, frankly, she missed Baldy, Sun Valley’s ski mountain.

“On the mountain, I was free; on the mountain, I was whole. … (The mountain) became where my life changed — and I knew that someday it would become my freedom again. It was just figuring out how to get there.”

Muffy is an ambassador for Disabled Sports USA. Their motto is, “If I can do this, I can do anything.”

“That’s the way I feel sports have been for me. After my accident, getting back on the slopes was like, ‘Oh. I can still ski. Oh. Well then, I can go to school.’ It’s so empowering, using sports throughout life for what is possible, for what do you want to do. Don’t limit yourself.”

So Muffy skied again. “I had unfinished business,” she says now. In 1998, she took bronze at the Paralympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, riding a monoski. She won gold in the 2000 world championships, three silver medals in the 2002 Paralympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, where she now lives, and then she retired.

“I thought I was done. The competition, the skiing — it couldn’t get any better. I competed in my home country, I got on the podium three times. I had a wonderful ski racing career, from able-bodied through adaptive.”

Always active, Muffy met the man who would become her husband on a rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. She and Jeff Burley, a recreation therapist for adaptive sports, were married in 2004, and in 2008, their daughter Elle was born. To keep in shape after her pregnancy, Muffy took up handcycling.

The sport is so new that when Muffy was injured 23 years ago, adaptive mountain bikes and handcycles didn’t exist. On her bike, Muffy lies on her back — an aerodynamic position — and pedals with her arms. She describes it as “a street luge with gears.”

“I love — love — riding. I love handcycling, almost more than skiing, which seems taboo (to say). I feel like I am the athlete I was before my accident. …

“Most of it is how hard can you crank, how hard can you get in that ‘pain cave.’ … I wouldn’t say I like the pain cave, but I like knowing I can push myself hard and push myself through that pain.

“I know (the pain) will end — dig deep. How hard can you dig, how long can you hurt? And that’s when you’re going to win.”

Driven athlete that she is, she set goals. She entered races, she went to a camp; on a whim, she competed in nationals — and won. The sport is so new that the field wasn’t deep, she says, but that win placed her on the U.S. World Championship team. In the world championships, Muffy got three silver medals.

“Once I knew I was competitive internationally, everything kind of changed.”

Going for the Paralympics again — competing on such an elite level — meant a serious, full-time commitment, a decision that, this time, affected more than her.

“You’ll never make the Paralympics or Olympics unless it’s a 100 percent commitment. And that means a sacrifice for everyone, the whole family. … So we went for it.

“It was a team. … That’s why we joke (that) I got three medals: one for me, one for Jeff, one for Elle.”

Three golds in London: in the handcycle time trial, road race and handcycle relay.

“I used to say ‘God made me to be a ski racer.’ Just this last year, I re-edited that. Now I say, ‘God made me to be a competitor.’ That’s where I am fully Muffy — when I’m in the starting gate or on that field to play, or pushing myself to be my best in athletics. That’s where I’m really me, 100 percent.”

(The full story continued in link below)

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/10/21/2317891/light-lineywhat-are-your-dreams.html#wgt=rcntnews

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/10/21/2317891/light-lineywhat-are-your-dreams.html#wgt=rcntnews#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/10/21/2317891/light-lineywhat-are-your-dreams.html#wgt=rcntnews#storylink=cpy

When Muffy was an 8-year-old skier in Sun Valley, she was already planning her Olympic future. And while the medals she now holds originate in that childhood determination, her path ended up being far different than what she imagined.

“I was an Olympic hopeful, but I am a Paralympic medalist. Who knows if I would have made it to the Olympics? I was a hopeful; it might not have happened. But I know what I am now: I am a Paralympic gold medalist.”

In her teens, Muffy was on the U.S. Development ski team, about to be named to the U.S. Ski Team (along with teammate Picabo Street). But that all changed when she was 16, on a curve at 50 mph, during a routine training run.

“You often wonder what you would have been, but I have a great life. I’ve done everything I’ve ever wanted to do — and more than I ever thought I would do.”

The first tree she hit crushed her spine. The second tree shattered her helmet. In the hospital, when doctors asked her to wiggle her toes, she couldn’t.

“I have been blessed that I never had to change my dreams or my goals because of my disability. ... Sports is a passion in my life. That was my first initial fear when I had my accident. … I learned that was an unfounded fear, and I can still do everything I love.”

Muffy, 39, is paralyzed from the middle of her ribs down. After the crash, she channeled her competitive energy into therapy. She laughs, remembering how she’d turn physical therapy into a race — like her three-minute “9-yard dash” in braces. Convinced she would walk again, initially, she declined the idea of adaptive skiing.

But then it snowed, and, frankly, she missed Baldy, Sun Valley’s ski mountain.

“On the mountain, I was free; on the mountain, I was whole. … (The mountain) became where my life changed — and I knew that someday it would become my freedom again. It was just figuring out how to get there.”

Muffy is an ambassador for Disabled Sports USA. Their motto is, “If I can do this, I can do anything.”

“That’s the way I feel sports have been for me. After my accident, getting back on the slopes was like, ‘Oh. I can still ski. Oh. Well then, I can go to school.’ It’s so empowering, using sports throughout life for what is possible, for what do you want to do. Don’t limit yourself.”

So Muffy skied again. “I had unfinished business,” she says now. In 1998, she took bronze at the Paralympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, riding a monoski. She won gold in the 2000 world championships, three silver medals in the 2002 Paralympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, where she now lives, and then she retired.

“I thought I was done. The competition, the skiing — it couldn’t get any better. I competed in my home country, I got on the podium three times. I had a wonderful ski racing career, from able-bodied through adaptive.”

Always active, Muffy met the man who would become her husband on a rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. She and Jeff Burley, a recreation therapist for adaptive sports, were married in 2004, and in 2008, their daughter Elle was born. To keep in shape after her pregnancy, Muffy took up handcycling.

The sport is so new that when Muffy was injured 23 years ago, adaptive mountain bikes and handcycles didn’t exist. On her bike, Muffy lies on her back — an aerodynamic position — and pedals with her arms. She describes it as “a street luge with gears.”

“I love — love — riding. I love handcycling, almost more than skiing, which seems taboo (to say). I feel like I am the athlete I was before my accident. …

“Most of it is how hard can you crank, how hard can you get in that ‘pain cave.’ … I wouldn’t say I like the pain cave, but I like knowing I can push myself hard and push myself through that pain.

“I know (the pain) will end — dig deep. How hard can you dig, how long can you hurt? And that’s when you’re going to win.”

Driven athlete that she is, she set goals. She entered races, she went to a camp; on a whim, she competed in nationals — and won. The sport is so new that the field wasn’t deep, she says, but that win placed her on the U.S. World Championship team. In the world championships, Muffy got three silver medals.

“Once I knew I was competitive internationally, everything kind of changed.”

Going for the Paralympics again — competing on such an elite level — meant a serious, full-time commitment, a decision that, this time, affected more than her.

“You’ll never make the Paralympics or Olympics unless it’s a 100 percent commitment. And that means a sacrifice for everyone, the whole family. … So we went for it.

“It was a team. … That’s why we joke (that) I got three medals: one for me, one for Jeff, one for Elle.”

Three golds in London: in the handcycle time trial, road race and handcycle relay.

“I used to say ‘God made me to be a ski racer.’ Just this last year, I re-edited that. Now I say, ‘God made me to be a competitor.’ That’s where I am fully Muffy — when I’m in the starting gate or on that field to play, or pushing myself to be my best in athletics. That’s where I’m really me, 100 percent.”

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/10/21/2317891/light-lineywhat-are-your-dreams.html#wgt=rcntnews#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/10/21/2317891/light-lineywhat-are-your-dreams.html#wgt=rcntnews#storylink=cp
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