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AccesSportAmerica, a national non-profit organization, inspires higher function and fitness for children and adults living with disabilities through high-challenge sports and training.
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Watch Videos about AccesSport:
A Gleam in the Eye
YouTube
COMING EVENTS
Auction for AccesSportAmerica
Friday, March 30, 2012
Royal Sonesta Hotel, Cambridge
Team AccesSport/Boston Marathon
Monday, April 16, 2012
Overview
Application to Join Team
AccesSportAmerica Mayor's Cup Regatta
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Boston's Charles River
Sponsor/Entry Form
Photo Gallery
EVENTS
AccesSportAmerica Leadership Luncheon
Friday, November 4, 2011
Boston Harbor Hotel at Rowes Wharf, Boston
Good Sports Applaud AccesSportAmerica
AccesSportAmerica Mayor's Cup Regatta
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Thank you Boston Business Journal
Team Photos
Event Photos
"Marianne Leone is a courageous steward of the legacy and message of her son, Jesse... She brings us into her home, and won't let us go until we are inspired by the love her family shared." - Ross Lilley, Executive Director, AccesSportAmerica
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Patriot's Coach Bill Belichick is donating a portion of each book sold to benefit AccesSportAmerica. From the Boston Globe: "In his book, "The Education of a Coach," [David] Halberstam describes the organization as "an extraordinary group to which the Belichick family is committed, which brings formidable athletic challenges . . . to children and adults with serious physical or developmental disabilities."
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Letter from the Executive Director Winter 2012
Photos, courtesy of Stephen Gardner, MD
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I believe, with all my heart, that we're at our best when we find something very simple in common with another person and connect. Too often we try to create or reinforce difference for own esteem. That is, we may be ever so proud to be: an American, a Red Sox or Yankee fan, still looking younger than our peers, better at most in a sport, more clever with facts and figures, or almost anything to create distinction. It's part of the human condition that we create our own differences to feel like we're a little above the rest--even if for a moment. In truth, so many of us waste time in competition with others instead of living in true community. But what if we competed only with ourselves and put more energy into looking for those simple connection points with others?
We hope that this is how we try to live as athletes and trainers in our AccesSport community. Life is quite good when we feel no distinction or difference between an athlete living with a profound disability and trainers who have no perceptible disability. And I don't mean that life is good when we have a realization that "It could just as easily be me..." I don't think that is the best connection point anyway. When people feel compassion for others using phrases like "...but for the grace of God, there go I." they miss the point on living in solidarity. They're just glad the bus ran over someone else or the disease ran through another house. Connection, at least for me, is usually based on what we truly share as a very basic joy in life. This could be a returned smile, a touch on a shoulder, a playful punch in the arm, feeling a windsurf sail tug when filled with wind, the solid hit of a ball in the sweet spot of a tennis racquet, seeing sweat drip for the first time with an athlete training in a racing chair, or being a real part of a Hawaiian Outrigger team. Connection is, as example, a shared laugh when my partner with a soccer ball whacks a pass into my leg in jest. In that moment, neither of us thinks about his low affect and other manifestations of his living with Autism or the fact that I'm a little hobbled with a knee injury. We share that we are both kids inside who can be happy with the simplest game.
We might say that AccesSportAmerica is built on a foundation of community. And that community is based on finding connections and commonalities. Most of what we share in common is very simple and childlike. People often tell our trainers and especially me, that we are all just big kids. That is a great complement because that is where we may share our greatest happiness.
Sincerely,
Ross Lilley
Executive Director
Previous Letters from the Director
 Affiliated with Disabled Sports USA
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