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Adaptive sports are helping people with disabilities get in the game

 Zack Sikora, right, coaches a student during a tennis camp for children who are blind or visually impaired.
Courtesy of Fred Neurohr
Zack Sikora, right, coaches a student during a tennis camp for children who are blind or visually impaired.

Juandez Scruggs was 14 when he suddenly lost his vision.

He was diagnosed with Leber hereditary optic neuropathy, an inherited optic nerve disease.

Doctors told Scruggs he would have to give up sports. But his high school basketball coach figured out a way to adapt the game for him so he could keep playing on the team.

Now Scruggs works as the adaptive sports coordinator for Clovernook Center for the Blind & Visually Impaired, and is part of a network of people in Greater Cincinnati who are working to adapt more sports for children and adults with disabilities.

Scruggs joins Cincinnati Edition to talk about the power of adaptive sports, along with Zack Sikora, a lead coach and mentor for the Cincinnati Tennis Foundation who was an internationally ranked wheelchair tennis athlete; and Fred Neurohr, executive director and co-founder of The Bridge Adaptive Sports and Recreation.

The University of Cincinnati's Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Division, May We Help and The Bridge Adaptive Sports and Recreation will present the SOAR Expo from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 8 at Lunken Airport. Admission is free. The expo will showcase products and services for people with disabilities, including adaptive sports equipment.

Listen to Cincinnati Edition live at noon M-F. Audio for this segment will be uploaded after 4 p.m. ET.

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