From the shores to the slopes

Ski enthusiasts in Point Lookout have turned a life-long hobby into a life-changing experience for children and adults with disabilities.

This group of 10 residents are part of the Adaptive Sports Foundation (ASF) at Windham Mountain Resort in upstate New York and spend much of their winter weekends instructing ski lessons for people with special needs.

“I think it’s giving an opportunity to people that wouldn’t have the opportunity under normal circumstances to be like everybody else,” Susan Marcote said of the program. She explained that the students suffer from a range of disabilities including Autism, blindness, Spina bifida and loss of limbs.

A group of developmentally disabled students from South Side High School in Rockville Centre made a recent trip upstate, and the foundation is hosting a weekend for wounded veterans as part of the Wounded Warriors Project, a national organization for soldiers.

Marcote has been involved with the program since 1989 and “that was the end of me skiing as a regular person,” she said. She spends 15 to 20 days in the mountains during the season working with her students.

ASF was founded about 25 years ago with 20 students and had since grown to 1,300 student visits per year. Instructors use various types of adaptive equipment to assist their students that included harnesses, tethers, mono-skis and bi-skis, which allow users to sit and skis with two blades on each foot for extra balance, and outriggers, which are ski poles with a short ski-like attachment. “A lot of it is just developing a lesson and developing a plan to help them get over their disability,” said Tim Carey, an instructor who has taught for eight years. For Carey, the foundation is a family affair with his aunt, Cathleen Driscoll, and mother, Maureen Carey, the program’s first two instructors.

“Very often because of behavioral issues, [students] live in a restricted environment,” said Marcote who is also one of the original instructors. “but, once safety issues have been addressed they can take off and go all over the place.”

Driscoll said many of her students, even those who are the most challenged, tell her that they have never felt such freedom and can’t wait to return to the mountain. “When you give of yourself, you get so much back,” said Driscoll of her reasons for coming back every year for the past 25 years. “And the families have touched me.”

Carey recalls a Garden City family that had two blind children about his age who attended the program during its early years. “They were just good normal kids aside from the fact that they couldn’t see,” Carey said. The program allowed them to participate in an activity that their able-bodied friends do and they continue to ski today, he added.

Bernie Moran was tapped for the program 21 years ago when the program director spotted him skiing backwards with a child. He has taught many children who have continued to ski as adults, including an Autistic girl, now in her 20s, who had behavioral problems.

“It’s a humbling experience,” said Moran, who was sidelined this winter with torn rotator cuffs. “Everybody has to have a charity or a purpose other than making money and working for a living.”

Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.