CHICAGO—Approximately 265 athletes and over 500 families gathered in Chicago from June 30-July 8 to participate in the 2017 Department of Defense Warrior Games.
The DoD Warrior Games is an annual Paralympics-style event designed to showcase the resilient spirit of wounded, ill and injured service members and veterans from all branches of the military. Service members and veterans from the United Kingdom Armed Forces and the Australian Defense Force also participated in this year’s games.
These athletes are active duty or veterans that suffer from upper-body, lower-body and spinal cord injuries; traumatic brain injuries; visual impairment; serious illnesses; or post-traumatic stress. Despite these challenges, they have learned to use adaptive sports and other adaptive reconditioning activities to assist in their rehabilitation to overcome the challenge associated with their new condition.
The athletes participated in eight sports (archery, cycling, field, shooting, sitting volleyball, swimming, track and wheelchair basketball) which have been adapted in various ways to accommodate a variety of conditions and abilities.
Participants qualified for the games by enrolling in their service’s wounded warrior program and then participating in structured camps, clinics, trials and daily adaptive sports activities that are executed with support from the DoD Office of Warrior Care Policy Military Adaptive Sports Program
In March 2016 Staff Sgt. Rachel Salemink, a human resource specialist in the U.S. Army Reserve and native of Churubusco, Indiana, discovered the Warrior Games. Salemink, 1st Battalion-330th Regt., 95th Training Division, was assigned to a Warrior Transition Battalion in Fort Bliss, Texas during March, 2016 and awaiting a hip surgery for injuries she sustained while mobilized to the CONUS Replacement Center, when she heard the Army trials were coming to her installation. There
| Date Taken: | 07.08.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 07.15.2017 21:50 |
| Story ID: | 241302 |
| Location: | CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, US |
| Web Views: | 80 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Wounded Warrior Adapts and Overcomes, by MAJ Adrienne Bryant, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
