Built by the community it serves.
We expand access to adaptive sports so athletes can find their place. We are athletes and coaches who know what that place can mean, and we are building the support to help more people find it.
The people behind the mission.
Athletes and coaches with years in this community. Our fund honors Tim Gruensfelder.
Karen Atkinson
An Army captain and disabled veteran who found adaptive sports on the other side of her service. A Move United Warfighter Ambassador, an AMP Adaptive Sports board member, and First Chair of Stand Up and Play. She brings an athlete’s perspective to the work.
Learn more about Karen
Mike Carrico
Retired Director of Racquets at the Birchwood Club and an adaptive tennis coach with two decades on the court. He once coached a kid in a wheelchair he called Hot Shot. That kid grew up to found Adapt To Life.
Pete Petersen
Came to coach tennis with no background in disability and helped build wheelchair pickleball on the North Shore from the ground up. Today he volunteers as a coach at a weekly wheelchair pickleball night at Brick House. In 2025 he competed in hybrid doubles at the US Open Pickleball Championships in Naples.
It started with a brochure.
Alec Tranel has been in a wheelchair since he was six; by eighteen, twenty-eight operations. A few months after his injury, a physical therapist handed him a brochure for adaptive sports he didn’t know existed. A gym led to a coach who saw an athlete, not a kid in a chair. Alec spent more than twenty years in this community as an athlete and a coach, then came back to coach at the program that raised him.
I got lucky. Great coaches, the right equipment, someone who believed in me before I believed in myself. Not everyone gets that lucky. That’s the whole reason we’re here.
Alec Tranel
Founder & Executive DirectorWe build more ways into adaptive sports.
There are people doing good work in adaptive sports all over the country. We work alongside them, helping people find each other and building resources that make it easier to take part.
The Hustle & Heart Fund
Finding an opportunity does not always mean being able to afford it. The Hustle & Heart Fund is our athlete deployment fund. It helps athletes with equipment, training and travel, and it works through ambassadors like Juan Ortiz, who help clubs, organizations and coaches build adaptive programs where they live. We bring more than money: coaching know-how, volunteers and content too. The programs belong to the people who run them. Right now the fund is deployed in Chicago Pickleball: Wheelie Big Dills.
Adaptive Sports Near Me
Our free directory brings programs, grants and events together so athletes, families, and people making a referral can find somewhere to start. It is in beta now, with testers using it and telling us what to fix.
Adapt Body Shop
Our upcoming store will focus on gear and apparel for the adaptive sports community. We are developing it to serve the people who play and help sustain the work around them.
These are starting points, not the limits of the mission. What we build next should come from what the community needs.
The more we grow, the more we give.
Every useful resource, lasting partnership, and new source of support should help this community go further. That is the kind of growth we are here to build.
There is room for you here. Explore volunteer roles