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He’s too busy being a single father to two sons, working as general manager of sales and marketing for an adaptive mobility company, speaking at schools, and playing goaltender for the U.S. sled hockey national team.

Brandon’s life changed on September 10, 2002. He was on a ladder trimming a tree when he fell 15 feet to the driveway, landing flat on his back. The fall caused burst fractures in several vertebrae, resulting in paraplegia. In the months of recovery and rehabilitation that followed, Brandon realized giving up wasn’t an option; his two boys, 11-year-old Scott and six-year-old Trevor, depended on him.

“If I couldn’t find the strength within myself to recover, I knew I must do it for them,” Brandon recalls. “They needed their father back to as close to normal as possible, and quick.”

Following the accident, Brandon, a native of St. Louis, was sent to DePaul Hospital, where neurosurgeon Dr. Danial Scodary implanted titanium rods in his spine. He was then transferred to St. Johns Mercy for more surgery and rehabilitation. After a month of rehab, Brandon underwent five more months of out-patient therapy three times a week. He has developed a close relationship with his doctors, particularly Scodary.

“I owe a lot to him,” Brandon says. “He has been a godsend to myself and my family.”

Less than a month after his injury, Brandon, who had played roller blade hockey for years, was introduced to sled hockey by his physical therapist, Kathy Griffith. Invented at a rehabilitation center in Sweden in the 1960’s, sled hockey became a Paralympic sport in the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer. Players sit in specially designed sleds placed on top of two hockey skate blades, and the puck must be passed underneath the sled.

After watching the U.S. Paralympic team play a game, Brandon met several of the players, and was deeply moved by the experience.

“It was there that I created a new cast of heroes,” he says. “Here was a bunch of guys that have all overcome horrible injuries of their own, and went on to play for their country and win a gold medal in Salt Lake City at the 2002 Paralympics.”

Once he was cleared by his doctors, Brandon played one season for a team called the RIC Blackhawks before being invited to the U.S. Team tryouts this past August in Colorado Springs. After five days of tryouts, he made the team as a goaltender.

But other challenges lay ahead. When Brandon discovered that his boys were being ridiculed at school because of his wheelchair, he realized how important it was to show others that disabled people could lead productive lives. He began speaking at grade schools, demonstrating how he uses his wheelchair to go up and down stairs, play sports, and do many of the things everyone else does, with some modifications. He shows kids his Ford pickup equipped with a special seat, wheelchair lift, and remote control power topper.

Brandon is amazed at how much of a difference these brief encounters can make in changing the way kids think about people in wheelchairs. “Their first reaction is that they are a little unsure, only because they just don’t know we are typically normal people who have suffered injuries,” he explains. “They have no idea we were just like their moms and dads before. But after an hour of questions and answers, and discussing all of the great things we can still do, they offer to push me, open doors, carry my things to the truck, anything to be involved.”

Kids aren’t the only ones affected by Brandon’s courage and positive outlook. His friends and family have been with him every step of the way the past two years, and are proud of what he has overcome. His mother, Carol Halloran Ferguson, isn’t at all surprised at her son’s resolve.

“It never occured to him to set limits. He never has,” she says. “Scott still has that twinkle in his eye and the good nature and easy grin. “He is still a loving father, son, brother and friend, facing the same daily struggles and joys as every other person.”

Brandon hopes to lead his sled hockey team to a gold medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, and to find that special someone to share his struggles and triumphs with. His biggest goal, though, is to be the kind of dad his sons can look up to and be proud of. With all he has overcome to this point, there is no doubt he has already gone a long way to accomplish that.

To read more fascinating articles about adaptive sports for people with disabilities, subscribe to Adaptive Sports & Recreation, the free ezine published every other Wednesday. Just send a blank email to:
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Tags: athletes, disabilities, hockey, paraplegic, sports, wheelchairathletes, disabilities, hockey, paraplegic, sports, wheelchair

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The Dodgers had a breakfast a couple of weeks ago to tell their story about off-season moves and the team they’ll put on the field for 2005. I was there to listen to the new owner, Frank McCourt, the general manager, Paul DePodesta, Hall of Famer, Tommy Lasorda, and the Dodgers’ manager, Jim Tracy. They told a good story about the Dodgers and what their plans are, but the most interesting aspect to me was something that was said and its application to teaching kids about sports and ultimately, life.

After the presentation was finished, people from the crowd were allowed to ask questions. One guy asked about Milton Bradley and the Dodgers’ thoughts on the negative example that he sets as a role model for high school and younger ballplayers. You may remember, Mr. Bradley has not always been a shining example of good sportsmanship and is currently undergoing anger management counseling as a result. To a person, each of the four Dodgers representatives, while acknowledging that there had been problems, defended Milton Bradley as a great guy who is often misunderstood; as a member of the Dodgers family, he deserves a second chance and that everybody really does like him as a person.

The Concept of Perfection

To me the most interesting comments came from Jim Tracy. Not only did the Dodgers’ manager say that Bradley is somebody he loves working with, he said he is an ever better player to manage because he is a “perfectionist”. I’m paraphrasing, but Tracy basically said that he loves Milton’s attitude because he never thinks he should make an out when he’s at the plate and he doesn’t feel like there is ever a ball he can’t catch in the outfield. He expects and demands that he will be “perfect” every pitch, every out, every inning, of every game. After the meeting, I talked to Jim Tracy about this idea of “perfect” as it applies to kids.

What we talked about was perfection: how is it good for a ballplayer, especially a child, to expect to be perfect? More so in baseball, where failure is the expected norm; failing 7 out of 10 times makes you a star. Everybody swings and misses. The best players in the world regularly walk in runs, and errors are made almost every game. Why is perfect the right goal? Jim Tracy had to leave before we had a chance to finish the conversation, but it did get me thinking about the goals and attitude we should teach our SportsKids.

The Right Attitude - It’s about Control

Why would anybody ever tell there kids to be perfect? Michael Jordan once said: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Babe Ruth had the record for strike outs in a career until his record was broken by another Hall of Fame member of the 500 HR club, Reggie Jackson. Nobody is perfect!

If you can’t be perfect, what is the right goal? In his fantastic book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey talks about being “response-able” for your actions. In sports and in life there are so many things that are completely out of our control, but we individually have the ability to choose our responses to each situation - positive and negative. In essence, you can’t control the actions of anybody else or the results; only yourself. Consequently, the focus has to be on what you can control.

Surprisingly, my 5 and 6 year old basketball team that I coach had the answers. Since I was thinking about Milton Bradley and perfection, I decided to ask some of the kids their thoughts on the subject. First, each of them is afraid of different things playing sports. Some didn’t want to miss a shot, get a rebound off their head, make a bad pass or lose the game. So we talked about Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Kobe Bryant and others and how they made mistakes too. It became very liberating for them to realize that they didn’t need to do everything perfect to be a good basketball player.

The more we talked, the better the kids started to feel about themselves. Realizing that you don’t have to be perfect is a good thing, but does that conflict with what Jim Tracy said was so great about Milton Bradley: expecting to get a hit every time at bat and to catch every fly ball? Not necessarily if the focus shifts from being perfect to doing what you can control. While my older teams that I coach focused on the “results” of actions, it was again the 5 and 6 year old kids who did a great job in helping me understand what elements of a game can be controlled:

1. Fundamentals - there is no reason that every kid can’t learn to do things the right way. If the coach can teach a kid to perform with proper fundamentals the results will follow. The emphasis here has to be on first, the coach learning the right things to teach, and then, insisting that the kids do it correctly. Remember: Practice makes Permanent!

2. Focus - Every kid can think and have their head in the game. Even the kid who can’t make a basket can be in the right place all the time.

3. Hustle - Do your best and put out the most effort that you can on every play. Every coach should be working on kids to hustle, play hard and put out effort - not on results.

4. Teamwork - This plays into focus as well, but working with your teammates is something that every player can do, control, and excel at.

5. Sportsmanship - There is never any reason to not be a good sport. This year, I’ve seen far too many kids saying “bad game” instead of congratulating the other team on their effort. Be a good sport - always!

Measuring Your Results

At the end of each game, ask the kids to evaluate their individual and team performance. You’d be surprised at their own understanding of how they did. Don’t spend time on performance measurement, but on the non scorebook things that the kids can control. We can’t control the results of our actions, but if we work on everything we can control, we won’t be perfect, but we will be the best we can be.

Ken Kaiserman is the President of http://SportsKids.com - a leading sports Internet site for kids and their families. In addition to coaching football, basketball and baseball, Ken serves on the local Little League board of directors and a park advisory committee. Ken and his wife Sheri have been married for since 1991. They have three children: Benji, Bobby and Rebecca (aka Rocky) who all love their sports!

Tags: baseball, basketball, coaching, coaching tips, football, hockey, kids, parenting, soccer, sports, youth sportsbaseball, basketball, coaching, coaching tips, football, hockey, kids, parenting, soccer, sports, youth sports

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In ice hockey, skating can make or break you. Here are the 4 fundamentals to becoming a top performing ice hockey skater, plus 4 extra techniques to push you right over the edge!

1. A solid, well-balanced stance is basic to any degree of speed you want to attain. If you will work on your starts, stops, and turns as described, you will be well on your way to good balance.

2. In striding, you have better balance if you skate with your feet about shoulder width apart. If your feet are too close together, you are more easily knocked off-balance in the heavy going of a game.

3. The faster you skate, the more you should bend forward from the waist. The comparison here is to the body-lean of a sprinter doing the 100-yard dash and the striding form of a two-miler. During the course of a hockey game, you will be both a sprinter and a strider as the play dictates. But when you really want to dig fast, with or without the puck, you should lean well into it.

4. For straight-ahead speed, your power comes from the thrust you get when the knee of the digging foot straightens. To get maximum thrust, the knee of the leg coming forward should be well bent. Be sure you carry this knee forward ahead of the foot. Then when you place your foot on the ice, you get full muscle power when the knee straightens.

Top athletes, especially outstanding track stars, recognize the importance of leg power and do something about it. They use a principle of training known as over-load. And you can use your own form of it, too. Here are some methods of over- loading:

1. Drive yourself all out as long as you are on the ice during scrimmage. Do not just coast around the rink on skates; they will do most of the work for you if you let them.

2. Skate in short, hard bursts, gradually building up the number of lengths of ice you can do successively.

3. Get a buddy to let you push him up and down the ice. You are over-loading by the amount he weighs.

4. In testing yourself at top speed, keep up a continual refrain in your mind: “I can go faster yet!” Be sure to warm up well before any all-out test.

If you study these 4 fundamentals and over-load with the 4 techniques above, you will improve your skating skills dramatically. And that in turn will improve your overall ice hockey performance.

FREE ice hockey training can be found at Sir Jon Weaver’s information web site. Discover the secrets to performing at the top of your game, with a focus on beginners. It’s FREE! Click here: http://www.HockeyForBeginners.com

Tags: hockey, hockey training, ice hockey, learn hockey, sportshockey, hockey training, ice hockey, learn hockey, sports

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