Wheelchair tennis is kind of like traditional tennis, but with wheelchairs. That sounds obvious, but the two sports are remarkably similar. The only adaptation is wheelchair players get two bounces instead of one.
“Maneuvering your chair around and taking the figure eights and stuff on the court is really what I’ve learned, how to hit the ball and don’t watch where the ball’s going,” said Joel Fini, a 46-year-old Des Moines native.
Fini is one of many utilizing the services of Adaptive Sports Iowa (ASI), an Ames-based nonprofit that organizes sports and other recreational activities for Iowans with physical and visual disabilities. Fini is paraplegic, the result of an accident in 1993 that injured his T7 spinal nerve and paralyzed his hips and legs.