Paralympic gold medalist, author provides greater understanding of athletes with disabilities

Two-time Paralympic gold medalist, author, and Northwest Indiana native Patty Cisneros Preva and friends gave a lively talk and wheelchair basketball demonstration Saturday morning at Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Valparaiso that enabled the community to have a better understanding of sports for the disabled and how to speak about them in respectful, preferred language.
Sponsored by the Disability Awareness and Inclusion Subcommittee of the city of Valparaiso, it was one of several events put on by the city to celebrate Disability Awareness Month in March. And a celebration and discovery it was for attendees whose questions were welcomed with open arms by Preva and her friends from the Chicago Skyhawks Basketball Team, who also allowed adults and kids alike to try a basketball wheelchair out for themselves.
Cisneros lost the use of her legs after a car accident her freshman year in college at Indiana University, she told the crowd after being introduced by Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas. “What really changed the trajectory of my life was wheelchair shorts,” she said of the rough period she went through at age 18 following the accident.
“I had such a wonderful, rich experience,” she added. “I got to meet the most wonderful people and travel all over the world.”
But when the teacher and mother couldn’t find children’s books with disabled athlete characters she decided to write her own. Six-and-a-half years after she began writing, “Tenacious: Fifteen Adventures Alongside Disabled Athletes” was published in June.
The book highlights 15 disabled athletes from child Annabelle Geib, a dancer with spastic diplegia cerebral palsy, to adaptive surfer Meira Va’a Neson. The book appeals to younger readers with rhyming prose and older readers alike with biographies at a more advanced reading level on the facing page.
Moments of joy and the greatest challenge are given for each athlete. “Just getting out of the house is a daily challenge,” says featured athlete Eve Hampton of the struggle to get out the door with kids in tow, something Cisneros was eager to include to showcase a commonality all parents struggle with.
Cisneros, who is program manager of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the University of Wisconsin, said the education of the book goes both ways, teaching reader and author. “The whole purpose of writing ‘Tenacious’ was to bring disability to the forefront. I wanted to bring disability to the forefront. I wanted to shine a light on disability,” she said.
“I wanted to change the narrative,” Cisneros added, explaining that disability is just another facet of identity, like gender and sexual orientation, and that the disabled don’t appreciate the hero narrative. She also told those gathered that writing the book was a huge learning experience for her.
“When I wrote this book I had no idea about ableism, even as a disabled person.” A disabled friend who specializes in identifying ableist language helped her weed that out of her manuscript. “I realized I was using a lot of ableist language in the book.”
She gave the crowd some pointers on language, so they, too, could speak respectfully. She told them to avoid euphemisms and just stick to the factual terms disabled and disability. “Wheelchair user” is preferred to “wheelchair-bound,” and “accessible” to “handicapped.” “Certainly don’t use handicapped when we’re talking about people,” she said.
Then Cisneros took questions from the audience, which ranged from how she stays strong physically and mentally, to what she considers her most challenging moment to date. Cisneros recalled the period two months after the accident when a wheelchair athletics advocate visited her in rehab and suggested she give wheelchair basketball a try.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I can’t even sit up and you want to talk about wheelchair basketball?’”
One woman asked Cisneros what advice she would give to a newly-disabled adult. “I would say really find support,” she replied. “It doesn’t matter how old or young you are. It’s a vast, very diverse group of people.”
When asked by her friend and teammate Jorge Alfaro what’s next in her extraordinary life, Cisneros said she’d like to make the transition to full-time author. She has plans for a series of “Tenacious” books with the next focused on disabled musicians.
When the Q&A was over Alfaro, Ivory Harris and Ramone Medina gave a demonstration on wheelchair basketball, explaining how the rules differ from regular basketball, and giving pointers to folks trying out the kid and adult-sized basketball wheelchairs. “I thought it was pretty easy, except the shooting,” said Emmett Meixer, 9, of Valparaiso, who just finished his first season of basketball. “The shooting was hard.”
His brother Ellis, 6, agreed the shooting was hard, but “I think it was a tie when I raced the guy in the red wheelchair.”
Adult Duane Davison, of Valparaiso, was a little worried about getting his fingers caught in the spokes but managed to avoid it. “It was a good experience that everyone should do just to see what it’s like,” he said.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.