You’ll find them at the gym almost every day of the week. Sometimes they lift weights, and sometimes they do strength excercises. But most of the time they just play volleyball. Sitting down.

Nichole Millage, Lora Webster, and Kari Miller are not your average volleyball fanatics. These three University of Central Oklahoma students are part of the U.S. Women’s Sitting Volleyball Team, and will compete in the Paralympics (an athletic competition for disabled athletes) in Beijing this summer. They may not play volleyball exactly the same as everyone else, but they play it with as much intensity as you’ll find on any court in the world. Each of these women has a story on how they came to join the team. And though all of those stories begin in tragedy, they end in hope.

Nichole Millage lost her left leg in a boating accident when she was 21. After her injuries healed and she worked through the shock of the accident, she adjusted to life with a prosthetic limb and began competing in paralympic events like the 100 meter dash. She also turned her attention to helping others adjust to life with prosthetics. During a summer camp for disabled children, she first heard about sitting volleyball. After trying out and joining the team, it has become a big part of her life. She said, “There is a whole community of amputees here [in Edmond]. We all hang out together, and once the full sitting volleyball team is here to train this summer, we’ll all be one big happy family.”

Lora Webster has been a competitor all her life. Active in sports from an early age, it was a shock to she and her family when she was diagnosed with bone cancer when she was only 11 years old. Lora was told the doctors would have to remove part of her leg, but thanks to an innovative surgery, she would retain leg muscles and the natural joints of her knee. After the surgery was over, she began pestering her doctor to get a prosthetic so she could get back to competing. She said, “At that age, all I wanted to do was heal up and start playing sports again.”

Lora has been on the team the longest of the UCO students, and has traveled the world to play other sitting volleyball teams. She competed in the 2004 Paralympics in Athens (the Paralympics is held two weeks after the Olympics end) as well as numerous global competitions in nations from Argentina to Egypt. Since UCO is the official training site for both the Men’s and Women’s Sitting Volleyball teams, she says the guys on the Men’s Team are an important part of her community. “The men’s team is like family to us,” she said. “We travel overseas with them, and in those situations, they become like big brothers to us.”

Kari Miller was serving in active military duty when a drunk driver collided with the car she was traveling in. The driver of her car was killed. Kari survived, but she lost both her legs in the crash, one amputated above the knee, one below. Being a double amputee was a shock that took time for her to adjust to. In fact, disabled athletes were the very people to challenge her to dream bigger than her disability. She said, “When I was first hurt, I was in a wheelchair. The doctors, they say things like ‘you’ll never walk again.’ But other disabled athletes challenged me to get up and start walking again.” She did.

Kari spent many years competing in wheelchair basketball games before being introduced to sitting volleyball. She’s hooked. She said, “I enjoy the challenge of it. This is a sport that you can never master. You get closer and closer [to perfection] but at some point you are going to mess up. I like always having something to reach for.”

The ladies are all excited to compete in the Paralympics in Beijing, and plan to represent our nation well. “We are getting better and better,” said Webster. “We are peaking at the right time.”

While Miller, Millage, and Webster live in Edmond year-round, the full national team comes together once every month to two months for intensive training at UCO. Miller said it is comperable to National Guard duty. “We get together once a month, on the weekends,” she said.

Sitting volleyball is not for the weak of heart (or body). “Sitting volleyball is not a very body-conscious sport,” said Webster. “It works absolutely every muscle in your body, from your legs, arms, and shoulders to your back and stomach.” And while the court is shorter and the net is lower, the sport is exactly the same in every other way as “standing” volleyball.

Each of the competitors also recognizes their sport has more to offer than just a victory. “It’s not even about the volleyball,” said Miller. “And it’s not only us, the disabled person, who benefits from the sport. It’s also the family members. Sitting volleyball offers a way to connect back to community. It’s a way to get your self-esteem back. Guys come back injured from Iraq, and they feel like they aren’t worth anything. But if they just get around someone who has already been through [it], they can see these people moving on and having families. There are millions of disabled people in the U.S., and I wish that, on a community level, we had more outlets for people to discover disabled sports like sitting volleyball.”

This summer in Beijing, Miller, Millage, and Webster will be doing more than playing a game. The will be raising awareness about sitting volleyball. They will be representing the U.S. on a global stage. And they will play with a strength and endurance that they’ve developed by overcoming tragedy and perservering into triumph.

Ben Davis is a freelance writer from Oklahoma City who loves writing, fried okra, and people, in that order.

Top photo, left to right: Paralympic sitting volleyball players Nichole Millage, Lora Webster, and Kari Miller. (Photo by Kathryne Taylor)

Bottom photo, action shot of the Paralympic sitting volleyball team. (Photo provided.)



The 2008 Paralympic games in Beijing China
Disabled athletes first participated in Olympic-style games in 1960, and in 1976 the international Paralympic games were formed. Today, this competition includes athletes from six different disability groups but the focus is on the achievement and not the  disability of the athletes.

In addition to Sitting Volleyball, 21 other sports are represented in the summer games, including archery, swimming, wheelchair fencing, and powerlifting.

While the Paralympic Games have always been held the same year as the Olympic Games, since the summer games in 1988 the Paralympics have also been held at the same venue. An agreement signed in 2001 between the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee ensures that Olympic sites chosen from 2012 forward will also host the Paralympic Games.

Future games will be held in Vancouver, Canada (2010), London England (2012), and Sochi, Russia (2014).

To learn more about the Paralympics, please visit Paralympic.org.