SANTA BARBARA — Junior Wheelchair Sports Camp will welcome approximately 40 enthusiastic campers at the UCSB Recreation Center. Funding from the Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation allows all campers to attend the week for free.
The annual camp provides sports and recreation skills development for children, youth, and young adults between the ages of 6 to 21 years old who can use a wheelchair to participate in sports and recreation activities. This year more than 50 volunteers will assist the campers.
Camp activities range from beginner to advanced wheelchair sports and recreation activities, including rugby, basketball, tennis, hand cycling, swimming, boxing, SCUBA diving, racquetball, obstacle course, climbing wall, ropes course, dancing, dodgeball, pickle ball and a festival of fun.
Counselors and instructors are wheelchair users themselves, so they become natural mentors to the campers on how to stay healthy and active while living with a disability.
Junior Wheelchair Sports Camp began in 1986 and is the only camp of its kind on the Central Coast. It attracts campers from the tri-counties and beyond, including Los Angeles and Bakersfield and Temecula. Transportation for campers is provided for free from Oxnard, Santa Maria, Lompoc, Carpinteria and Santa Barbara.
Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital and Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation sponsor the camp with support from individuals, organizations, and businesses in the community. The camp is led by Rene Van Hoorn, Recreation Therapist and Manager of Community Programs at Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital.
About Cottage Health cottagehealth.org — The not-for-profit Cottage Health is the leader in providing advanced medical care to the Central Coast region. Specialties include the Cottage Children’s Medical Center, Level 1 Trauma Center, Neuroscience Institute, Heart & Vascular Center, Center for Orthopedics, and Rehabilitation Hospital. The Cottage Health medical staff is comprised of more than 700 physicians, many with subspecialties typically found only at university medical centers. Last year, the Cottage Health hospitals in Goleta, Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez Valley provided inpatient care for 19,000 people, treated 81,000 patients through their 24- hour emergency departments and helped deliver 2,000 newborns.