Paralympic Classification

Intro once again welcome to the blaze Sports Institute for applied science this is a cdss level two curriculum session and today we're going to talk about paralympic sport classification this is classification 101 where we'll provide you a basic overview of Paro Olympic sport classification so paralympic sport INTRODUCTION classification uh a little bit of an introduction uh what it is what it's for and as you can see there uh as with other sports that utilize classification systems it provides a framework for people with disabilities to compete uh one of its aims is to make sure that the disability has as little impact on the result of an athletic competition as possible and that skill development uh really is what goes into that and that people can compete on an equitable playing field and we'll get into how classification does that uh here in a few moments um but again it the the basic purpose purp of classification really boils down to creating a fair and Equitable playing field so that uh practice training knowledge the talent of the athletes strategies skill development uh and really to some extent coaching come into play to determine the result and not the disability of the athletes that are competing within the International Classification in the Paralympic Movement competition well what does inter International classification do do um again it provides a structure for competition and there's a number of different ways it does that throughout the different sports um and as we'll see there's a difference between some individual sports and team sports and how classification is used to create that Equitable playing field uh again uh a little bit different than what we just discussed classification makes sure that an athletes impairment is relative to the sport performance and ensures that the athlete uh competes equitably with others what does that really mean uh well what that means when we look at the second bullet point the athletes impairment is relative to the sport and one of the current issues in uh paral Olympic sport classification now has to do with uh track and field or track and particularly road racing when you think of something long road races 10ks but more so marathons and you think of some of the track classifications we'll get into those later later but one of the classifications is for athletes who have amputations and one of the classifications within uh the amputation category would be upper arm uh upper extremity amputations and how does someone with a below the elbow amputation how much does that amputation how much does that disability actually affect their ability to compete at a marathon level or possibly even a 10K level are they really at a disadvantage relative to Runners with no disability at all the one of the other issues uh again with road racing think about an athlete with a visual impairment an athlete who actually has some visual accd is not totally blind but qualifies within other paralympic sports uh because they do have a visual impairment but how much does that visual impairment actually hinder them or disable them relative to an athlete with no visual impairment in a distance rate such as a marathon if that athlete with a visual impairment can run without a guide can train and can see the road can see the course and really is not disadvantaged or impaired relative to an athlete with no visual impairment at all does that athlete belong in the par Olympic games that athlete belong a par Olympic sport or should that athlete simply just be competing against other people without any disabilities at all those are some of the current issues going on in paralympic sport classification some of the questions the classification aims to answer and again uh make sure that the impairment is relative to sport performance and ensures that the athlete competes equitably with other athletes and as we get into some of these current issues equitably not only with other athletes with disabilities but also equ equitably with other athletes that may not have a The Purpose of Classification disability purpose of classification um and and you can see there determine eligibility compete compete and group athletes for competition uh we'll get into uh grouping or or determine eligibility complete here in a moment uh now to group athletes for competition again when we look at individual sports versus team sports there's two two different methods that are used when you look at individual sports you're looking at grouping athletes oneon-one so you're basically looking at putting athletes together that have virtu the same type of impairment that results in the same possible functional levels when we look at team sports we have to put a group of athletes on the floor against another group of athletes and try to ensure that those two groups are Equitable and uh that raises some other challenges again that we'll get into here in a moment uh eligibility to complete compete obviously the first role of classifications is make sure that an athlete actually has a disability and believe it or not there are some current issues going on you can Google uh fake disability or paralympic sport fake disability and you will see that there have been some paralympic athletes that have been found to have been faking their disability for a number of years um obviously there's some uh psychological issues going on there but also as the paralympic games gain notoriety and more money comes into disabled sport people are going to want to compete and it doesn't matter you know what uh what genre you operate in people cheat and paralympic sport is no different and people do fake their disabilities and classification does need to be designed to make sure we can find those people that are trying to cheat and eliminate them from competition classification has evolved over the years initially um back in Classification has evolved over the years 1960 uh and prior to that with the Stoke mandible games uh the games were primarily for people's spinal spinal cord injuries and uh as a result classification was a Pure medical test well what does that mean that means they they evaluated the level of injury if it was a complete injury or an incomplete injury and you were assigned a classification simply based on that uh spinal cord injuries especially when they're complete are pretty cut and dry and even with they're incomplete uh it you're almost looking at a black and white issue with very few gay gray areas um and now it it's changed obviously as we've added all the different disability classes into paralympic sport in addition to people's spinal cord injury of people visual impairments uh people with Cal poy brain injury stroke um people with amputations uh dwarfs and uh as we'll get into it we also have what's called lasra which is the others uh so there are a wide range of disabilities out there that um that provide someone eligibility to compete with an adapted uh disability and Par Olympic sport that don't fit precisely into those categories uh but they are eligible to compete and because we've we've gotten into all those different types of disability classes it's required us to to evolve the classification system and now we're in a more uh functionally based system which requires more than just a simp simple medical test or even a manual muscle test it involves observing the athletes and the athletes are not only observed during a classification session but they're actually observed while they're competing while they're training while they're practicing they're even observed while they're eating uh at a Paro Olympic Games an athlete uh is not really classified until they've beener been observed in all different areas and a person's classification can change if a classifier uh sees them in a dining hall doing tasks that they previously claimed they were not able to do uh they see them do it for instance someone might uh a wheelchair basketball player might be a class one uh which means they have a very high level of injury um above T4 most likely and uh that means they have virtually no function in their core no ABS uh very difficult to balance uh classifier sees that athlete who's who's being proposed as a class one you know reach over perfect balance grab something off the Floor come back up using their trunk muscles that's going to affect their classification um it's going to be taken into account um the third bullet point uh there are uh two disability groups that use uh only uh medically based test uh the visually impaired uh a visual Acuity test and intellectually impaired which is a classification coming back into the par Olympic Games for London and that is that is an evolving process as well because there have been issues with determining if someone actually has an intellectual impairment and that continues to evolve and will continue to evolve uh and we'll see how it goes in London hopefully there'll be no controversy and we'll be able to keep moving forward and keep those classes within the par Olympic movement um they were removed after Sydney because there was a big scandal with the intellectually impaired uh basketball team a standup basketball team from Spain uh the majority of their athletes were found to have had no intellectual impairment whatsoever they cheated the system and it's uh classification is really having a difficult time trying to determine a foolproof way to determine if someone actually does have an intellectual impairment now we talked about one of the purposes of classification is to determine eligibility to compete and one of the things that comes into play there is minimum disability well what's minimum disability well that's when there's no uh no re no Perfect Fit again into those classification groups but a person does have a permanent physical disability that that hinders their ability to compete in the able-bodied version of that sport uh and as you see that disability must be measurable and it must be permanent it can't I can't just blow out my knee I can't blow out my ACL and go play Wheel your basketball legally until it heals and then go play standup basketball again it has to be a permanent injury but disability does minimum disability does vary from sport to Sport and and again the big thing is does that permanent measurable disability impede that person's ability to play the able-bodied version of the sport at a competitive level and one example for that one of the best US Women's wheelchair basketball players we've ever had had blown her knee out multiple times as a college athlete she tore ACL numerous times and got to the point where it was a completely unstable joint and the orthopedist said had basically determined that she no longer had any ability to move laterally she could run in a straight line fine but any lateral movement uh was just not possible for her anymore uh now obviously if you want to play standup basketball you have to be able to move laterally and cut and she was determined medically to no longer have that ability so she met the criteria for wheelchair basketball for minimum disability now would she meet the criteria for wheelchair racing well probably not because when you think about wheelchair racing you're essentially running in a straight line certainly road racing we get back to that idea of those distance Runners and does a person with a upper extremity below the elbow amputation are they really at a disadvantage as a person with the visual impairment that does have V some visual Acuity and can run without a guide uh are they disadvantaged is a person who can run perfectly in a straight line um but not laterally are they really disadvantaged in a long-distance road race and those are the questions that come into play and the things that the classification system needs to answer so what what other sports utilize classifications are there other sports that utilize classification system is this unique to paralympic sports some people that are new to paralympic sport hearing about it for the first time react uh negatively to the classification system I've heard some people say that it devalues the sport that you're not putting the best people out there that uh it it for some reason that the utilization of the classification system means that it's not real sport well if that's the case does that mean that boxing is not a real sport since uh um you you don't have Pacquiao fighting a heavyweight uh does that mean that uh weightlifting is not a real sport since you compete by weight classes uh you don't have someone who weighs uh 100 kilograms compete against someone that weighs 60 kilograms they compete within their own weight classes does that mean that virtually every model of sport we have where we separate males from females that those really aren't sports that all sports should be co-ed those are all examples of class classification systems and they're used throughout sport uh they're used they're used in daily life and it's it's it's just part of the way it's part of what the a mechanism we use to create Equitable competition across sport it's not unique to par Olympic sport it's just that in par Olympic sport we have to go so much further because there are so many more considerations uh to be had what I want to do now is just give uh a little overview of some of uh the different uh classes uh or classification categories disability classes uh again we said one of the classes uh people cereal poliy brain injury and stroke although I'm a slide ahead because we're on the visually impaired classes right now so uh obviously again one of the class categories is people visual impairments and blindness and there are three C categories for people with visual impairments and blindness and the b1s and the b1s are considering considered people who are totally blind um as you can see no light perception or some light perception but cannot recognize the shape of a hand in any distance now people who typically compete in the B1 classes across the sports are required to wear uh opaque uh lenses or masks as they compete uh because obviously you do have two two subcategories within B1 people with no light perception people with some light perception so to make sure that they're on an equitable playing field and they compete they have to everyone regardless of whether they they say they have light perception or not are required to wear some type of opaque apparatus over their eyes so that they're competing on a uh Equitable playing field and then the B2 class uh person has some visual Acuity and would probably utilize uh a guide um as the B1 classes would um in in the various sports that would lend themselves to the use of a guide and then in the B3 class you've got a little bit more visual ACC you can see the the the 260 uh you can see 2 meters at 2 meters was normally seen at 60 Metter so obviously severe visual impairment all three classes are considered legally blind and the b3s however th that's that uh that's that classification group we talked about that um generally does not need a guide can run on a track without any assistance uh can run train run down the road run a course can see enough where they're going to be safe and does not need any assistance to train uh for for that sport now obviously some uh someone with the B3 class if you can only see at two meters was normally see at 60 meters when you get into cycling uh now that's something where you're probably you are going to be on a tandem bike and you're going to have a pilot that has uh um that has sight uh because as you're traveling at 20 30 40 miles per hour you're going to be in a bit of trouble if uh you can only see something uh um recognize something at two meters when you should have seen it at 60 meters away and plan your adjustments so one of the again one of the disability classes that we talk about one of the categories of impairment Is Blindness and visual impairments another again being reintroduced back into London is uh people with intellectual disabilities and uh the international organization that governs this is the international sports Federation for persons with an intellectual disability also known as inos FID and uh when you might say okay well what you know what what is a person with a intellectual disability well here's some of the the criteria um the onset of the disability had to occur prior to age 18 it generally is presented with an IQ below 75 and as you can see a limitation two more adaptive skill areas and those skill areas communication self-care social skills home living health safety um so that really opens up a wide range of uh intellectual impairments and cognitive impairments that uh would fall under this realm now some of you might be saying well IQ below 75 so how is that how is that different from Special Olympics and that's that's a really um this is a really unique situation and I encourage you to investigate this a little bit on your own find out a little bit more but in a nutshell when we think about Special Olympics the population group is virtually the same um the difference being Special Olympics exists for participation uh it exists to provide uh the ability to participate in sport and Recreation and it groups people together based on what their performance levels are so you have good competitions and where inos FID comes in they take those athletes that are competing on a participatory level and that may want to compete on a competitive level may want to compete and do so at a competitive level possibly reaching the paralympic games and and gives them that opportunity and really that's the only difference when you look at Special Olympics versus inos FID inos FID is that competitive arm that can take those athletes to the next level now we get to the slide that I jumped head to uh people with cereal policy brain injury and Str stroke CP isra is the international governing body uh for people that would fall under this uh classification category there are eight classes within that and as you can see we've got four classes uh for people with cereal paly brain inury stroke that would utilize a wheelchair during competition and four classes for those who would be ambulatory during competition and a little breakdown of CPISRA Wheelchair Classes description of those those eight classes so cp1 uh you're going to have these people who are using a power chair uh or assistance for Mobility they really don't have the ability to move uh a manual wheelchair on their own um athletes in this in this uh classification uh botch is a sport that they would be competing in at the par Olympic level uh cp2 able to PR prare manual wheelchair but very poor um strength in the arms and legs and trunk not going to be really functional added again Bachi is another um another is a sport for this classification group as well and these would be considered athletes with high support needs um historically um different terms of views they' be athletes more severely disabled or low functioning the proper terminology currently being used the current terminology being used is athletes with high support needs HSN now we get into to a little bit higher functioning classes of the wheelchair classes CP3 CP 4S and as you get into these really um this opens up virtually all the Wheelchair Sports are open to the athletes within these classes uh although when they compete against people often times they're going to be grouped against other athletes um that don't necessarily have cereal paly brain injury stroke but might have uh spinal cord injuries uh that uh render those athletes with quad repges so they have impairment in all four limbs much as these athletes uh would have into the ambulatory classes cp5 cp6 CPISRA Ambulatory Classes uh cp5 um would be the athletes with the most severe impairments within the ambulatory CP classes as we move our way up we get into the least severely disabled and as you can see cp5 you're going to see um the CP affects the athlete on both sides of the body maybe using a walker maybe using crutches uh might be able to run but not going to do it for extremely long distances the gate's not going to be pretty at all and uh longdistance running would be contraindicated for cp5 athletes uh cp6 athletes um you're going to see a lot of spasticity in these athletes especially as they get tired uh they can uh they can be ambulator or obviously they're ambulatory probably not not necessarily using assisted devices can run again but again uh um they're going to be it's going to be their disability is going to be noticeable as they're running cp7 and8 this is where we get into uh the highest functioning athletes uh a lot of uh your football seven aside players are going to be in these classes a lot of your better players you're going to see a lot of runners in these class classes uh a lot of track athletes and some really good swimmers as well um and with cp7 you've got uh the hemiplegics uh a lot of times you're going to see that presented as those athletes that may have one upper extremity that is very limited function if some of you seen uh Josh Blue um who the famous comedian who also is on the United States seven aside football team soccer uh Team he's a hop he has hemiplegia uh and uh then as we get into cp8 minimal diasia hemiplegia um or a movement disorder that meets minimum disability and again we get into that minimal disability this kind of falls into that lay Altra uh so if someone has a movement disability that doesn't really fall right in there this could be a classification that they get put into now with that we're going to move into some of the I'm not going to go into detail through a lot of these Sports uh just want to give you an overview of some of the different sports and the different classes there are so archery paralympic sport we've got uh the wheelchair classes and a standing class Archery Classification um also what uh you isn't uh really in there uh is the ar1 ar2 you're going to see an ar1 AR W1 rather those also going to can uh um it's going to have athletes within that classification that have upper extremity amputations and one of our best archers in the United States uh only has one arm and he pulls uh he pulls the bow back with his mouth uses the other arm steady the bow and he's an extremely accomplished Archer and uh you can Google or YouTube one armed Archer and you're going to find some great visuals of competing Athletics um also known as track you know internationally track and field is known as Athletics the singular term here we call it track and field here's a great visual of some amput Runners and here's an great visual of some uh wheelchair Racers and I believe that's Amanda mcgory in the middle there who uh you might see on uh at BP stations BP gas stations she's one of the featured and sponsored Olympic athletes uh going into London here's a double lower extremity ampute throwing a javelin another great Athletics Classification Visual and track and field uh offers competition to athletes from all the disability groups all the classification categories um so as you can see there we'll go through those in just a second here so remember for the visually impaired classes we had B1 B2 B3 in athletics the compete in 11 12 13 uh the intellectual people with intellectual disability compete in class 20 in track and field uh again the CP classes 1 through eight for track and field their classes 31 through 38 one classification we didn't really talk about which falls under that Las Altra is the dwarfs they are class 40 and you can see the different criteria and it's a it's a pretty simple straightforward height measurement for males and for females if they qualify within the dwarf classification and the class 40s also encompasses all the people with amputations uh 42 through 46 and as you get into 42 44 42 43 44 45 46 uh the different uh classifications depend on if it's an upper lower single double uh amputee and then the 51 through 58 are the different levels of spinal cord injury the Feld classes uh very similar to the track classes uh well I want to back up one minute uh we had these athletic classes so this is just overall General categorization of the classifications in athletics now we get specifically into field uh one of the Athletics - Field Classes things you might note here you don't see an F31 class you don't see uh an f51 class um You've Got 5 2 through 53 uh and 58 um so you can see how that breaks down and as we get into the track Athletics - Track Classes classes um you don't have a t40 class the dwarfs do not have um track events within paralympic Sport and when you think about the biomechanics of a dwarf and the physiology of a dwarf um running just for the most part is contraindicated so that's not one of the classes that's available um and then for track rather than 52 through 58 we've got 51 through 54 Where the 51's and 52s are people that have limitations in all four extremities 53s 54s would just be people with limitations in their lower extremities and would have varying degrees of trunk control 53s would have some trunk control 54s would have uh all trunk control and 54s uh people with amputations lower extremity amputations who want to compete in uh wheelchair racing rather than ambulatory racing would compete in the t-54 classification bot we talked about bot a Boccia little bit uh again a sport for athletes with cereal paly brain injury and stroke uh it is a sport for athlete with high support needs so you're not going to see anybody in that uh cp8 classification competing in bachchi Bachi has four classifications bc1 through BC four and you can see the first two classifications here and I do want to point out as you see in B bc1 foot foot players um athletes with arthog gripos um and if you're not familiar with that disability a disability that affects the uh the growth and development of the upper extremities so often you're going to see those athletes with arthrosis that have extremely short or completely missing arms they will have hands but on very very short uh upper upper extremity limbs or ar hands that actually simply protrude directly or attached to the shoulder joint so very limited arm function uh not really able to throw botchy ball so they can actually use their foot uh they can have an assistant place the botchy ball on their foot and they can use their foot to propel the ball on the court and here you see the bc3 and bc4 classes and I won't read those you can read those for yourself wheelchair basketball the sport near and dear to my heart great shot of USA playing Japan and I believe that's actually a U23 tournament not a par Olympic uh competition but uh to compete wheelchair basketball player must have a permanent lower extremity disability and must uh must impair them from playing uh Able Body basketball competitively internationally the classification system used is based on a point system from 1.5 uh from one rather to 4.5 I'm not sure why that says 1.5 to 4.5 it's one uh one to 4.5 according to their physical physical function uh now we talked about the difference between individual sport versus team sport now here's a great great example so you've got five players on the floor they could have a classification anywhere from one to 4.5 and how do you make that Equitable what if a team puts five four fives on the floor and the other team only has 145 and three twos and a three five and a one and a two five to choose from well that's where the point system comes into play so as you can see in that third bullet point there's a total number of points that cannot be exceeded on the floor at any given time and for international play that number is 14 points so you've got five players on the floor who have a classification from one to 4.5 by half points their total number of points cannot exceed 14 so that's the way and that's very similar to wheelchair rugby and we'll see that in a few moments um that's how we make an equitable playing field uh Within team sports and again I'm not going to read Wheelchair Basketball IWBF Classification these to you you can you can read them and you can also go on to the iwbf dorg website and they've got complete uh instructions and classification manuals that go into detail about how you would actually classify um these now one things I will say is you you notice that I just have one two three four and 4.5 the 4.5 classification again is for that person with a minimum disability so uh in a wheelchair a person with a minimum disability would be no different than if I sat in a wheelchair I I don't have a disability I don't have a physical disability so if I sat in a wheelchair person with minimum disability we would be virtually equal within the chair now I did not fit I did not again put in the half points in here because as you can see if a player doesn't fit in an exact class say it's not really a two not really a three they're going to be a 2.5 wheelchair basketball in the USA um we still use a medical classification system we're in the process of moving away from that and going into the functional system uh it is a functional system very similar to the iwbf system currently we do not use the half points uh that may be changing in the very near future but uh as it stands uh we are transitioning to a functional system to become up to date and to meet the standards of best practice and hopefully we will get that uh completed very soon and if you open up uh if you download the PowerPoint you can just click on that hyperlink there the iwbf classification manual and get in-depth knowledge of wheelchair basketball classification and as promised wheelchair rugby uh called quad rugby murderball in Wheelchair Rugby the United States and this is a sport for people who have impairment in all four limbs uh many people have a misnomer that a person who is a quadriplegic can't move their arms at all that's not the case quadriplegia or tetr aleia simply means that a person has an impairment in all four limbs uh they may have decent arm function very little hand finger function uh it all depends on the specific disability and then as you can see U the classification for rugby again uh they utilize a half point system from one half point to three and a half points and they're they have four players on the rugby court in any given time and they can never have more than a total eight points on the floor cycling there's a lot of different types of cycling um and again you've got uh all the well for cycling uh you've got the CP classes visually impaired Las AAS and amputees spinal cord injury isn't in there because hand cycling is actually separate separate sport from cycling it's it's hand cycling is its own sport so you can see here um that uh everyone everyone within the CP classes can compete and you can see that the CP one through four and is competes in division one and uses a tricycle uh CP people in CP classes five and six also can use a tricycle and compete in division two and then we get into the bicycle competitions for the for the cp5 and six in division three and cp7 and eight division four uh visually impaired and again uh people visual impairments compete in cycling as a tandem team uh there's a pilot and a stoker the uh the cited guide is the pilot and of course would sit on the front of the tandem cycle uh the visually impaired cyclist is the stoker and would be in the second position and uh the cycling classes are the same B1 B2 and B3 so now there are people with incomplete spinal cord injuries that can ride bicycles as well so here we can see the the LC classes the locomotor disabled cyclist and you can see the differences between uh each of those categories Handcycling there and then of course hand cycling for people uh with incomplete or complete spinal cord injuries also people with um amputations who do not want to use Prosthetics can compete in the hand cycle divisions as well and again I won't read those to you you can read them for yourself and you can download the PowerPoint and uh and spend all the time reading those you want Equestrian equestrian a lot of people don't realize equestrian is a paralympic event and uh again I'm not going to read these to you I'll let you peruse the equest equester information for yourself Fencing wheelchair fencing uh excellent excellent sport uh is on the rise the USA actually fares fairly well in uh wheelchair fencing um it would be nice if we could F that well in the able boded side um and then again as you can see here open to people with amputations with Cal poy brainy stroke and people who utilize wheelchairs for daily Mobility so people spinal cord entry and you can see those three classes gold ball gold ball is a Goalball disability specific Sport and you can see that uh those two athletes in the picture are wearing uh masks and so that hopefully leads you to the conclusion that this is a sport for people with visual impairments and blindness again we got three um we have the three uh classifications within the visually impaired groups B1 B2 B3 Judo another paric sport for people Judo with visual impairments and blindness and again now we've got uh actually two classifications going on in Judo because you've got the three uh visual impaired classifications and then you've also got the weight classes and you've also got male female powerlifting um I've seen some amazing performance by disabled athletes pushing up weight uh you just you would not believe people who think that people with physical disability cannot benefit from strength and conditioning training uh need to watch uh paralympic powerlifting competition so again as you can see uh powerlifting combin can uh take almost all the different uh disability groups people visual impairment isn't are not in there because when you think about powerlifting how would a visual impairment really um impair a person uh versus a person with the visual impairment versus a person without in terms of powerlifting they really W so that is not a classification that competes at the paralympic level in powerlifting and they people do complete compete across disability by way class so a person with a spinal cord injury who weighs 100 kilogram is going to compete against a person with a lower extremity amputation that weighs 100 kilograms um it simply that's simply straightforward calculation now for people with amputations there is a Formula that's used because obviously they're missing some weight from the amputation so there's a formula that is used to add weight back on um so that they are competing equitably and fairly in the correct cas category should they have had all their Powerlifting Minimum Disability Criteria lims and here you can see how powerlifting defines minimum disability now obviously when we talk about minimum disability or we talk about disability with powerlifting someone could have uh some type of limited function in their upper extremities well one of the criteria for powerlifting is you need to extend that weight to a locked elbow position so if you know if someone isn't capable of doing that and they could only if they had a loss of 90 degrees in both elbow joints they'd have an unfair Advantage so one of the one of the criteria criteria for eligibility to compete powerlifting is to have the ability to extend the arms with no more loss than 20 degrees of extension in either elbow um which still is quite a bit but uh that is uh one of the criteria for an equitable and fair playing field sailing another paralympic Sailing Sport and uh open to all the different categories and again I won't read those to you you can read them for yourself or you can do some more research online for sailing Shooting classification shooting paralympic sport very popular and we've got the three main classes and as you can see uh you've got pistol and rifle categories you've got upper limbs uh got visually impaired and then you can break these down to subcategories as well and uh again I'm not going to read those to you I'll let those let you read those for yourselves they're fairly straightforward 5 a side Soccer five aside soccer once again you see the three athletes in this picture have masks over their eyes which again hopefully leads you to the conclusion that this is a sport for people visual impairments and blindness so five aside soccer now some of you might be wondering well how the heck did they do that uh same as with gold ball which I think I actually failed to mention the ball has a bell in it so you can actually Loc the ball by sound it is five aside it is a smaller field um and the goalkeepers can be sided so um that does uh does uh allow for the scores to be a little bit lower than they would be if everyone had a visual impairment and obviously at that second bullet point you see uh the goalkeeper may not have been registered with FIFA the international governing body for football in the last five years now obviously that happened because people were simply recruiting FIFA goalies to come and be on the vision impair teams and compete uh I wouldn't say that necessarily gives them an unfair Advantage but those a those teams that have the ability to recruit those types of athletes surely would have an advantage in addition to fide soccer at the par Olympic level there's also seven aside soccer again this is a sport for athletes with cable poliy brain injury and stroke it is for the ambulatory classes and again you see those four ambulatory classes and as we had said earlier the majority of people on uh the the the field the seven on each side are going to be from uh the seven and eight classes but it is required at least one player from the cp5 cp6 classification be on the field at all times so that really again goes to help not only level the playing field but provide opportunity for people that have more severe disabilities to participate in enjoy the Swimming sport swimming another one of those uh sports that it has uh people from all the classification categories and you can see the breakdown there so for swimming you're going to have different classifications s for freestyle so you could have an S11 and an S11 if we go back is going to be a swimmer with a visual impairment and that would be equivalent to the B1 so an S11 is going to be a totally blind a blind swimmer who going to have to wear opaque goggles and is going to be swimming the freestyle stroke right so s is for freestyle S11 uh so opaque goggles totally blind um swimming the freestyle and you may say well how do how do the swimmers with visual impairments know they're coming close to the wall and some people have said well they must Count Their Strokes well no actually there's at each end of the pool um if it's a more than a on length race or if it's a single just a a single length pool length race at the end uh there's going to be a person called a Tapper that Tapper is going to have a p a pole rather with uh a ball at the end sometimes it's a tennis ball sometimes it's a foone ball and they're going to just simply tap the swimmer on the head when they get within a predetermined number of Strokes or distance from the end of the pool so they know that the uh that the touchpad is coming and then as you can see SB stands for bre breaststroke SM is the individual medley um so you've got uh you've got all the different strokes accounted for within the classifications table ten is very Table Tennis popular sport again number of classifications you've got the uh the classifications for athletes who use wheelchairs the standing classifications and also an intellectually disabled classification for table tennis the rules are a little bit different this course of course this isn't a session about the rules uh you can look those up but table tennis is a very popular sport and a lot of opportunity in the United States for athletes with disabilities who want to compete in table tennis to get to the international level sitting volleyball Sitting Volleyball and again you can read uh the minimum disability criteria specific to sitting uh volleyball interesting thing with uh with uh sitting volleyball there's no point system on there so one of the things one of the criteria they have is you may only have one person with minimum disability on the court at any time the rest of the team just simply has to have one of the higher levels of disability and uh one of the things we don't have uh with in this this presentation that I need to add uh sledg hockey sledg hockey is a very interesting sport uh in that it does not have a classification system Paralympic Classification or point system outside of minimum disability uh to be eligible to play slish hockey you have to meet their minimum disability criteria and then you simply put your team on the ice and plate uh it's very odd for a Paro Olympic sport uh that's something that may change in the future uh it's one of the only sports that operates in that manner and uh we'll see what happens in the future but that is a basic overview that is classification 101 paralympic sport classification for more information you can click on that hyperlink and you can find a lot of additional information on classification and one of the things I want to close with um and make sure that you understand is classification is not about classifying a person classification does not classify a person it classifies an impairment so you have an athlete a person who has a physical disability classification aims to Define that disability and assign it a c atory so that you can group athletes with similar disabilities and function to compete against one another so classification is not about classifying a person now why do I bring this up this is very important and hopefully you're sticking with me on this I have seen this too many times firsthand especially with Junior players uh and it happens with visually impaired people as well but uh but Junior athletes predominant ly Junior athletes with spinal cord injuries uh you know before you can take them to event and get them officially classified by train classifiers you give them uh provisional classification you evaluate them at practice and in training to get an idea of where they're going to compete when they do go to a competition and many many times I've SE seen an athlete when you think about the wheelchair track classifications t-54 uh that is the highest functioning uh group in wheelchair track um you could also flip that around say that's the least disabled class now what happens when you have a 13-year-old who you said okay I think you're a t-54 you know these are the times you need to hit here's who you'd be competing against um they take that they're they training you know they're trying to hit those training marks based on a classification of a t-54 you take them to the first competition classifiers good look at him and go you know what you you know you really got a few things going on we see this we see that we see some uh we see some deficiencies in the in the trunk movement and uh trunk function and you're a t53 well as a coach you're going oh that's awesome we've been training you at the to compete against t-54s now you're a t53 but here's what happens that youth comes out of that classification crying because as coaches we don't do a good enough job and I I would I would even Venture as classifiers we don't do a good enough job of educating the athletes that classification is about classifying their disability not them it's about class categorizing the impairment that youth will come out of that classification session crying because someone in their mind they just got told they're more disabled than they thought they were and that's one of the things that we need to be mindful of as coaches as we're dealing with classification and dealing particularly with youth to get them to understand that classification is not defining them as a person it's simply defining their impairment so that they can compete equitably it has no bearing on them as an individual similar things happen with athletes with visual impairments where they go in and take their eye test and they try to because they want to do well they try to memorize the ey chart well if they memorize the ey chart they're going to get classified instead of possibly as a B2 as a B3 when they're really a B2 and that's not helping them and that's not what the classification session about the classification session is about accurately defining and categorizing the impairment which is completely separate from the person so that's what I want to leave you with hope you enjoyed the session hope you got a lot out of it if you have any questions please call me or email me and good luck with the quiz