Accessibowl
Ability Magazine
By Jennifer Frazier
August in the college town of
Gainesville, Florida, is ~ a time when you find
the few and the hard-core stillhanging around
off-campus, waiting for another semesterto begin
and more friends to return. For Bill Millerand
his roommates, Rob Harrison and Ernie Barnett,
it was a carefree time, filled with workouts,
cookouts, girls, sports, beer, and take-out.
For Miller, August 23, 1997,
began like every other day butended quite differently.
In the early morning, he got out of bed to go
to the bathroom. He tripped on an abroller and
fell awkwardly. When his roommates found hima
few hours later, he was lying face-down with
his head resting on a wooden clothing and shoe
rack. They picked him up and put him back in
bed. But when Miller woke up around 8 a.m.,
he couldn't get up. Hoping it was another "stinger"
like he had experienced when playing football,
he thought it would pass after a little more
sleep. It didn't, and a few hours later, he
asked his friends to call 9-1-1 .
"The next thing I knew,
a half-dozen emergency workers were immobilizing
my neck, strapping me to a backboard, and trying
to maneuver my six-foot frame down two flights
of townhouse stairs. It wasn't fun," said
Miller. He was initially diagnosed with level
C-5, C-6, incomplete quadriplegia. Two neurosurgeries
later, he was diagnosed with C-I , C-2 complete
quadriplegia and was on a ventilator.
Injured at the age of 20, Miller
reflects the age and sex of the majority of
the nearly 243,000 people in the U.S. who have
become quadriplegic due to spinal cord injury.
Most, however, become disabled after automobile
accidents-an astounding 40.9 percent, according
to the National Spinal Cord Injury Database.
Ofthe 11,000 new cases each year, 53 percent
are between the ages of 16 and 30, and the most
frequent age at the time of injury is 19. As
modern medicine improves, so does the survival
rate, but unfortunately the quality of life
for some is but a shadow of their pre-injury
existence, and such tragedy is becoming more
common.
Miller's response to it, however,
was anything but common. He was not about to
let his spinal cord injury stop him. "Bill
always rose above adversity," said stepmom
Donna Miller. "On a break from college,
he had four wisdom teeth pulled, then painted
the house the next day. Bill works hard and
has always strived for perfection in everything."
And when Donna Miller, who works
as a judge, mentioned her stepson's situation
to her volunteer bailiff, Claude Giguere, a
former engineer at General Motors, he decided
to take action and help Miller. At the urging
of the judge, who suggested a bowling device
could be built, Giguere said, "I can make
him bowL"
Canadian-born Giguere had previously
engineered and implemented the first completely
computerized storage and retrieval warehouse
and the first automatic guided vehicle system
while at General Motors. These earlier successes
prepared him for the lengthy process of trial
and error in building a bowling device for Miller.
Fortunately, Miller was a willing guinea pig
and ready to rise to the challenge. "I
had to work with the garage door closed on the
first wooden prototype, because there were restrictions
about working on a commercial enterprise in
my retirement community. But we didn't let that
stop us," said Giguere.
By early 2002, Miller was bowling
an impressive 130- plus using the wooden prototype.
Going into bowling alleys late at night to avoid
crowds and intellectual property theft, Miller
and Giguere tweaked, refit, retooled, and continually
refined the first product, then known as the
Miller Bowler.
SHARINGTHEVISION
In their excitement, they shared
their journey with longtime friend and retired
Brandon, Florida, businessman Vincent Tifer.
Tifer, who has secondary progressive multiple
sclerosis, saw the bowler as much more than
just a recreational tool for Miller. He saw
it as a way to bring hope and enjoyment to millions
of people. Tifer volunteered his time and began
an equally arduous journey to make the bowler
a viable product and a sanctioned sport. "The
first time I saw the bowler," said Tifer,
"I knew that this could be exactly the
thing for bringing quadriplegics like Bill out
of the shadows."
By June 2002, MGT Corporation
was formed, reflecting the Miller-Giguere-Tifer
triad that had made the bowler possible. After
an exhaustive trademark search, the name IKAN
was chosen, which is taken from the Greek work
"ikano," meaning "enable."
The word about a new recreational
opportunity quickly spread among the Central
Florida quadriplegic community. Michelle Carston,
Ben Lux, Jennifer Harman, Rhonda Reese, and
Wendell Howell Jr. all joined the team. When
Jeff Parker, an individual with Duchenne muscular
dystrophy, joined their team, the Quad Squad
had its original seven. They now bowl on the
second Saturday of each month at the Villages
in Lady Lake, Florida, and have drawn much attention
while on the lanes.
This attention has gained them
the commitment of the Rotary Club of the Villages,
who made the IKAN Bowler® their
personal Centennial Project. They now pair
young Early Act elementary school-aged Rotarians
and Interact Club members, their teenage
counterparts, with the Quad Squad for bowl-a-thons
to raise money for bowler donations to needy
organizations. The last bowla- thon raised
enough funds to donate a bowler to the Shepherd
Center in Atlanta, Georgia, a renowned catastrophic
care hospital. Priced at $1,499, the bowler
is out of the reach of many whose injuries
and illnesses have affected them financially
as well as physically. Groups like The Rotary
Club of the Villages are working to make
the bowler available to as many in need as
they can.
"It is so heartening to
see the acceptance and compassion on the faces
of our young bowlers going against the Quad
Squad. The lessons of good citizenship and empathy
learned by the children who participate in our
bowla- thons are priceless," says Cliff
Moore, president of The Rotary Club of the Villages.
The Quad Squad has also proven
to be an important social circle for the bowlers.
They all live within a 40- mile radius of each
other in Central Florida but keep in contact
via phone and voice-activated computer when
not meeting on the lanes. Often they bring family
and friends to join in on the fun. "It's
been hard finding something my whole family
can share with me. Now, we can enjoy bowling
together. It's a dream come true," says
Harman.
Some bowlers travel a long distance
to take part in the IKAN experience. Take, for
instance, Tina Hughes. A league bowler for many
years, her world changed on July 21,2002, while
on her way to her bookkeeping job at Home Depot
in Gainesville, Florida. A small puddle of water
and a light rain made her SUV spin out of control.
Three weeks later, Hughes awoke
to learn she had broken her sixth and seventh
vertebrate and severed her spine, rendering
her completely paralyzed from the midchest down.
Now a resident of the Oakhurst Therapy Center
in Ocala, Florida, Hughes can't stop talking
about her IKAN bowling experience. "I have
a twin sister I used to bowl with, and now we
can do that again. Besides fishing, IKAN bowling
is the most physical thing I've done since my
accident."
Equally important, Hughes had
never met another quadriplegic until the day
she bowled. She is now in telephone contact
with the other members of the Quad Squad and
is working to raise enough money to buy a bowler
and a voice-activated computer of her own.
THE FUTUREOF THE IKAN
The IKAN Bowler®, which began
as a rather clunky looking ramp, was re-engineered
by Tom Muckle and his team at Mill Brook,
LLC in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and became the
first and only fully barrier-free wheelchair
bowling system in the world. Now it is sleek
and durably built of PVC, stainless steel,
and aluminum. Once the bowler was ready to
take to market, MGT Corp.'s goals became even
bigger. "We
envision a day when the IKAN Bowler® Bowling
League will be a Paralympic event," said
Tifer.
Jerry McCole, executive director
of the National Disability Sports Association,
feels such a goal is highly possible. The
NDSA (formerly the U.S. Cerebral Palsy Athletic
Association), one of the largest sporting
associations for athletes with disabilities,
is the current National Coordinating Body
for competitive sports for individuals with
cerebral palsy, those with brain injuries,
and stroke survivors. It provides sporting
opportunities for over 5,000 athletes with
disabilities and also formulates the rules,
implements policies and procedures, conducts
national championships in 10 sports, and disseminates
safety and sports medicine information. As
a member of the United States Olympic Committee,
which selects the athletes who represent the
United States in international competition,
the NDSA hosts major competitions such as
the National Sports Festival and World CP-ISRA
World Championships. The organization now
anticipates being able to use the IKAN Bowler® to provide consistency in apparatus during
the bowling portion of its events. "Right
now we have people who use stationary ramps
as well as wooden and metal ramps they've
built themselves,"
explains McCole. "It's hard to know whether
one bowler has an advantage over the other
when all are using different equipment."
These types of assistive devices
will become more and more important as the
population ages, according to Mark Ravenscraft,
marketing coordinator of the Rehabilitation,
Engineering and Technology Program for the
University of South Florida's Department of
Engineering. "We
look at hundreds of devices each year, including
those that aid mobility and communication
devices, but the IKAN Bowler® is unique. Plus,
as our population ages and as we engage in
conflicts around the world, the need for similar
assistive technologies will explode over the
coming decade."
The IKAN Bowler® was
presented to the American Bowling Congress,
and the process of making it a sanctioned
sport became reality on March 19,2004. On
that date, the American Bowling Congress amended
Rule 4C, which previously would not allow
for any device that provided any type of force.
The Women's International Bowling Congress
voted in May to approve the same rule change.
The congresses ruled that because the IKAN
Bowler® was attached to the
wheelchair, it was the wheelchair user who
was imparting the force. This change was important
because it allowed bowlers with severe disabilities
to compete on equal ground with able-bodied
bowlers; It marked the first time in history
that a quadriplegic had a sport with rules
of play that were no different than any other
athlete.
"There have been a number
of ramps but none that attached directly to
a wheelchair," said Al Vandenack, team
leader of Specifications and Certifications
for the American Bowling Congress and the WIBC.
"That makes the force and momentum of the
ball no different than if it left someone's
hand. We think it's going to open sanctioned
league play to those who couldn't participate
before."
BOWLINGANDTHEOLYMPICS
Bowling first exhibitioned at
the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, but the sport
was turned down for inclusion on the official
program of the 2008 Games in Beijing. Even with
that minor setback, The International Bowling
Federation and Brunswick have been working diligently
to promote bowling to the International Olympic
Committee. At this time, bowling is not on the
Paralympic program either. Currently, tennis
is the only sport that will include a special
class for quadriplegics in the 2004 Paralympic
Games in Athens, Greece.
Sherrie Phillips, 1996 Olympic
Judo Team Alternate, three-time U.S. World
Team member, a Silver Medalist at the 1995
Pan American Games, and an administrator with
the United States Olympic committee in international
relations, feels that with the proper development
of IKAN bowling as a sport, it can capture
the attention of the Olympic committee. "The
IKAN Bowler® offers those who have faced great
adversity in their lives the opportunity to
experience not only the triumph of the spirit
than an individual feels when participating
in sports but also the opportunity to build
tremendous and long-lasting bonds with other
human beings through participation in a common
activity. This itself is a wonderful thing," said
Phillips.
Phillips, also the owner of Sports
Consult, a sports marketing and consulting firm
that is known for its vast knowledge of the
Olympic movement, hopes to use her expertise
in advancing the IKAN league beyond just another
international sport. "We hope to elevate
it (IKAN bowling) to Paralympic status and beyond,"
said Phillips.
THEBESTISYETTOCOME
Today, Miller is working toward
finishing his bachelor's degree via University
of Florida online courses and speaks to a diverse
array of groups on the challenges of living
with quadriplegia. Miller feels the bowler has
given his life significant purpose since his
accident and believes the social benefits are
no less important than gaining the physical
ability to compete. "The fun we have at
the bowling alley is enhanced by the friendships
we've formed and the networking among fellow
quads. It's a healthy outlet for caregivers
to exchange information, as well," said
Miller.
Miller believes the IKAN is one
of several positives that resulted from his
accident. Being a quadriplegic and a world record
holder in IKAN bowling, having bowled a 182
(which he has bowled twice), might help Miller
compete on a level he never could have as an
able-bodied athlete. He muses, "I would
love to be an Olympic competitor. I'd be shooting
for the gold, but the experience itself, I'm
sure, would be something I'd treasure forever."
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