Stay Well and Stay Active!

Fran Gilbert
Executive Director, SportsAbility Alliance

And we are off and into the new year!  A new year, new possibilities, and a new team leader. We are making a great fast start. We welcome Fran Gilbert as our new Executive Director and she has hit the floor running. She brings her skills, talents, and experiences to help guide us on the pursuit of our goals and objectives of the SportsAbility Alliance.

We appreciate all that Laurie has done for us over the past twenty years to help make our organization so successful and to enrich so many lives.  I am also very thankful for the succession planning and preparation that she put into making for a smooth transition. We have lots of programs and projects in place that will continue without missing a beat. We were very fortunate to have previously landed Kasara Barto as our valuable part time staff person to assist us as Fran takes the helm and continues our journey into an exciting new era. We are also happy to have kept our three great FSU student coaches for the Miracle Sports program. It continues to grow, and we now have more participation than ever. Our Kiwanis Partners continue their support, and we have a different Big Bend club out every week providing snacks and cheering on the athletes. We brought on two new interns to continue giving support and to provide that talent and skills that comes from a younger generation. They have really taken our social media to another level, and we continue to reach more people than ever with our messages and information.

We are all working on our “Return to real time” SportsAbility Expo 23 event and looking forward to a fun packed reunion of our longtime friends and supporters, and we are really anxious to meet new friends and also our first time participants are invited to attend one day or all of our three day events. Watch our website and social media for announcements of our SportsAbility Samplers that will be happening with our partners around the state year round.

The other big news is with our ALLout EcoRover Adventure program. We are into our third year of grants from the Florida Wildlife Foundation that has enabled us to start acquiring EcoRovers, a new tracked electric all terrain wheelchair to offer hunting, shooting and outdoor recreation opportunities for people to participate and enjoy the many benefits of accessible and inclusive recreation in the great outdoors. We were awarded a grant from Move United and the VA that has opened opportunities for us to serve our veterans with disabilities. We also just received a grant from the Christopher Reeves Foundation that will provide another EcoRover and now include service for people with spinal cord disorders. These programs will help us to remove the two biggest barriers to outdoor leisure activities,, lack of mobility and the lack of knowledge about solutions and opportunities. These start up projects are helping us to get closer to our goal of making the EcoRovers more readily available statewide. Watch for our Adventure program offerings and online reservations as we develop them by collaborations and joint efforts of like minded people and organizations.

It is a happy new year for the SportsAbility Alliance and we wish you all good health, happiness and a productive 2023 year.

David Jones
Founder, SportsAbility Alliance

SportsAbility Alliance is a very unique nonprofit organization. We have been very successful in our mission and have made quite a difference in the lives of people with disabilities of all ages and, just as important, have also touched the lives of many families, friends, as well as our entire community.

This report shares some of our program efforts and results. What it does not reflect is the enormous impact that we have had with our year-round advocacy efforts.