Department of Defense hosts Warrior Games featuring adaptive sports

This summer the Department of Defense hosted the 14th annual Warrior Games in Orlando, Florida. The event features various adaptive sports with participants from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and this year the Australian military also participated.

The games featured this year were cycling, archery, air precision shooting, swimming, powerlifting, indoor rowing, swimming, track and field, sitting volleyball and the wheelchair events of rugby and basketball.

"For many of our SOF wounded, ill, and injured, military adaptive sports provide a crucial element in the overall process of recovery and rehabilitation. Participating in adaptive sports produces positive outcomes in overall health and quality of life, but sometimes even more essentially, it provides the social connective tissue back to the SOF family when our brothers and sisters are faced with challenges that change the course of their life," explained H. Kelly Ammerman who is the director of the Special Operations Command Warrior Care Program.

The event brings together disabled military athletes to compete, but also to build connections and camaraderie, with one participant stating that "connection is the cure."

"Here when we come together, we become a family, we become brothers and sisters, and we just grow very, very close to each other," said Master Sgt. Ivan Morera, who received an amputation in 2013 after a vehicle rollover. "We will show what we’re capable of doing, where we focus on what we can do and not focus on what we can’t do," Morera said.