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Adaptive sports programmes offer people with physical differences and activity limitations opportunities to participate in athletic endeavours and actively engage in the larger community.1 2 Curling is a sport played on ice where two teams take turns sliding polished, granite stones towards a target made of concentric circles, known as a ‘house’. The goal is to accumulate the highest score with points earned for the stones resting closest to the centre of the concentric circles.3 Olympic curling is played from a standing position. Wheelchair curling made its Paralympic debut in 2006 and is currently practised in 24 countries. It is played from a seated position and is open to participants with physical differences to the lower half of the body, including individuals with limb loss, spinal cord disorders and central nervous system conditions altering lower limb use (eg, cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis).2 4 Improvements have been made to the hand-held delivery stick, but the sport has primarily been limited to individuals with fully intact hand function and not expanded to include individuals with altered hand function in whom use of a hand-held delivery stick would be challenging.
Expanding access to adaptive sport
The Department of Veterans Affairs Spinal Cord Injuries and Disorders System of Care provides lifelong care to Veterans who served honourably in the US military and have developed a traumatic or non-traumatic disorder or disease of the spinal cord, such as multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, during or after their military service. The Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Recreation Therapy team at the Department of Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System collaborated with a local curling organisation to develop a wheelchair curling programme for veterans with spinal cord disorders. Recognising the potential to expand the sport to include individuals with high cervical-level spinal cord disorders, the team voluntarily explored equipment options that could be easily adapted to enable participation by those with limited or no hand function. The goal was to develop an easily fabricated and replicated, inexpensive wheelchair-mounted device that would allow an individual with significant upper limb weakness the ability to participate in wheelchair curling with minimal set-up. Experimentation began, with initial designs lacking the visibility or control for successful delivery of the stones. First generation models involved two pieces of piping attached in a capital T shape with a plastic distal piece that interfaced with the curling stone. Challenges included limited compatibility with different wheelchair types and durability. Subsequent prototypes offered improvements on prior designs. The final prototype was a professionally welded ¾ inch aluminium tubing (figure 1). This device proved to be rigid, lightweight and easy to mount with zip ties.
Professionally welded ¾ inch aluminum tubing power wheelchair adaptive curling mount.
New equipment, new technique, new opportunity!
To propel the stone forward during curling participation, the power wheelchair athlete drives the chair forward at the desired speed and trajectory and then stops accelerating to propel the stone toward the house. Athletes are now refining techniques to manoeuvre the power wheelchair and time the release of the stone to deliver an angled curl to better direct the path of the stone. Total cost of the materials and labour in 2019 was US$135 (materials US$75; labour US$60). The SCI Recreation Therapy and the local curling club have hosted 23 events to date to introduce this device. Nine Veterans have used the device and expressed high levels of satisfaction. Comments include ‘I love that I can come out here and either play with or compete against my family and friends!’ and ‘I didn’t think I would be able to do anything like this again. I don’t have to hear about curling from other Vets—I can go curling with them!’ Opportunities for improvement remain, including durability of the equipment and challenges in initiating an accurate curl with stone delivery. Efforts are underway to design a three-dimensional-printed distal connection that contacts the stone.
Serving the community of adaptive athletes
The SCI Recreation Therapy team was successful in identifying and overcoming a barrier to sports participation. The team designed and developed a piece of equipment that expands the sport of curling to include those with limited to no hand function who use a power wheelchair for mobility. This is particularly notable since there are fewer competitive adaptive sports options for those with high-level tetraplegia versus paraplegia.5 Although technologies are improving to allow for more inclusive sports participation by individuals with high-level spinal cord disorders, such as with sip-n-puff pneumatic switches allowing for adaptive skiing and sailing, equipment is often complicated, cost prohibitive and dependent on the developers of the tool or ‘super-users’ for programming and active use. The adaptive curling device shared here is inexpensive to produce, easy to manufacture and straightforward to replicate. It can easily be mounted to a power wheelchair by an attendant with verbal direction from the athlete with spinal cord disorders. The current design and instructions are freely available for replication and modification (online supplemental file 1). The development of this simple but unique piece of adaptive curling equipment exemplifies innovative practices in the field of recreation therapy in leading community sports reintegration and creating a more accessible environment for all individuals. Rehabilitation providers are encouraged to share similar small innovations with the larger community.
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Acknowledgments
This material is the result of work supported with resources and the use of facilities at the participating VA Medical Center. The contents do not represent the views of the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
Supplementary materials
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This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.
Footnotes
Contributors All authors contributed to the development, writing and review of this submission.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.