Registration Still Open for 8th Annual DisAbility Sports Festival

Registration is still open for the 8th annual DisAbility Sports Festival set for Saturday, Oct. 18, at Cal State San Bernardino. Registration is free to participants, ages 8 months to 84 years old, of all abilities at the DisAbility Sports Festival website event page at http://disabilitysports.csusb.edu/festival.html. On-site registration will be available at 8 a.m. the day of the event, which will run from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Parking is free in lots G and H, nearest to the athletic fields at the east end of the campus. Organizers expect as many as 1,000 participants, including more than 100 disabled military veterans, competing in at least 20 different sports, including wheelchair and standing basketball, tennis, soccer, wall climbing, swimming and hand cycling. Each sport and activity will be coached by an athlete with a disability, including Paralympians, and other elite-level coaches, which, organizers say, is a display of all the participants’ abilities. The purpose of the festival is to increase the sports opportunities for athletes with disabilities and thereby increase their quality of life and health, said Aaron Moffett, the festival’s director and founder who is also a professor of kinesiology at Cal State San Bernardino and a program coordinator for the U.S. Air Force Adapted Sports program. “The program has quickly become one of the largest sporting programs in the country for people with any disability,” Moffett said. “The growth is due to the testament of the need for such programs, especially for wounded warriors.” “The reason that we do this is because it helps people focus on success and their abilities when sometimes people focus on perceived inabilities,” he said. “One of our military participants last year said that the event made him feel alive again since being back from Afghanistan. The power of sport can touch everyone’s life and that is why we have the DisAbility Sports Festival.” Also featured will be an Assistive Technology fair discussing how people with disabilities can use technology to improve their quality of life and more than 30 information booths from community programs and services that are available for people with disabilities and their families. Including volunteers, supporters, spectators and athletes, an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 people will come to the university for the festival. Molina Healthcare is the lead sponsor of the event. Other sponsors include CSUSB’s Rec Sports, Incight, and the Inland Regional Center.