Inspiring The Next Generation To Include 

My name is Maria (Maz) Strong. I am Australian Paralympian #1113, having competed in Para-athletics at the 2020(ne) Tokyo and 2024 Paris Paralympic Games. I am also Sport4All’s State Sport Inclusion Coach in Victoria. 

Earlier this year, Sport4All established a partnership with Paralympics Australia, with one of the focus points on supporting the growth of the Paralympic Education Program. 

As a Paralympian, I’ve done a number of school talks before, including some organised through the Paralympic Education Program. In them, I told some of my story, showed off my bronze medal from Tokyo and answered children’s questions (which were mostly about either my disability or my sporting career… though I have been asked which football team I barrack for, too). 

In October, as part of my Sport4All role, I had the pleasure of taking the pilot ‘Paralympics Imagine’ program to five different primary schools across Melbourne. At two of these schools, I was joined by Paralympian Lichelle Hames (Para-swimming, 2004); at the others, I was joined by Paralympian Nazim Erdem (wheelchair rugby, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016). 

We still talked about our own sporting journeys. Lichelle brought along one of her old Team Aus race suits and lots of medals. Naz talked about finding wheelchair rugby after breaking his neck in a diving accident. I talked about starting to compete in midlife, inspired by the camaraderie I saw between Masters women, and discovering an unexpected talent. We showed short videos of wheelchair rugby and seated shot put. 

These ‘Paralympics Imagine’ presentations moved beyond our own personal stories, though. We played a quick game of true or false: “the first organised sport for wheelchair users was archery” (true), “the next summer Paralympic Games will be held in Los Angeles” (true), “there were 21 sports on the Paris Paralympic program” (false), “about 1 in 5 people have a disability” (true), “half of people with disability play sport” (false – only about 1 in 4 of us do, although 75 percent would like to). Then we asked an important question: why are so many people who want to play sport not playing sport? What are some of the barriers to playing sport for people with disability? 

At every school we visited, the initial barriers kids identified were impairment-related: “they might not be able to see”, “sport might be too hard on their body”. We talked about modified versions of sports, disability-specific sports, and finding the sport/s that suit you. One child identified attitudinal barriers: “people might tell them they can’t play sport”. Others identified that people may be made to feel unwelcome or bullied because they are different. We talked about reluctant mainstream clubs and coaches, the high cost of specialist equipment, physical access barriers and additional transport challenges. 

We got kids to identify barriers in a playground scene: steps, cobblestones, bags left on the path, inaccessible playground equipment, a too-high bubbler, loud noise (a potential access barrier for autistic people) and/or loudspeaker announcements (that a deaf person couldn’t hear). 

We talked about things we can do, individually or collectively, to make the community more inclusive – and what a more inclusive community would look like, sound like and feel like. 

I was asked questions I’ve never been asked at a school talk before, including “is there a sport that someone with FOP can play?” (Yes! Even someone with almost no remaining movement could be a boccia ramp player) 

There are more than five million people with disability in Australia. Less than 1200 of us have competed at a Paralympic Games. We are the tiny minority who made it to the world’s biggest sporting stage for athletes with disability, through a combination of talent, hard work, overcoming barriers and luck (there can be a lot of luck involved, including having the ‘right’ type of impairment in the first place and your preferred sport or event being on the Paralympic program for your classification). 

As someone who initially sought fun and friendship in grassroots sport, I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my unexpected success, particularly given the often-isolating daily training environment I found myself in. And I’ve never really felt comfortable being seen as an “inspirational person”. I don’t want to be put on a pedestal to tell my story, I want to talk about barriers and possibilities and solutions. 

I want to inspire, but what I want to inspire is change – in school playgrounds and PE classes, in grassroots sporting clubs, in people’s attitudes, biases and expectations, in the stories we tell both about disability and about sport (you can’t be what you can’t see!) 

Many adults have quite rigid ideas that are hard to shift. Children are often good at leading the way. 

By Maria (Maz) Strong, Paralympian.

Published 4 December, 2024.