Douglass Dumas, head wheelchair basketball coach and therapeutic recreation instructor at the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department, uses his passion for sports and personal experiences to make a difference in the lives of Columbus athletes. His team, the Columbus Knights participate in the NWBA, National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA), and have the goal of winning a national championship.
 

What inspired your work in/around sports?

My story is a little different. I had an injury at age eight, causing me to be paralyzed from the waist down. Growing up a sports nut, I didn’t find out about wheelchair sports until I was 14, but as soon as I did, I was all in. I joined an adult wheelchair basketball team when I was 14, and have been playing ever since. When I started working at Columbus Rec and Parks, they didn’t have a youth sports team. My goal is to be the coach I didn't have growing up. 

What role do you think sports and adaptive sports play in a vibrant community?

Sports in general are vital to a healthy community, because they are so galvanizing for people. People of all different socioeconomic backgrounds, all different ages, races, sexual orientations, everything you can think of, all coming together to achieve a goal, and that’s what real life is all about. Relationships and creating memories with people that will last a lifetime, and leaving something behind that is worthwhile, and that people can attach themselves to and see themselves in.  Everybody just wants to be seen, everybody wants to be recognized and feel like they matter and are adding value to something bigger than themselves. That's what sports are able to do. Sports is just that galvanizing force that brings everyone together and allows you to compete for something and be your best self. 
 

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How do you see or quantify success for the Columbus Knights organization?

I’ve always told our kids that success and winning are not the same thing. You can be successful and not win, and you can win and not be successful. Success for us is, especially on the kids' side, is allowing them to have these opportunities to travel, to be together, to spend time with each other. Seeing all these kids come together, and know that they have someone that, not just looks like them, but someone who’s going through the same things they are. Watching them build relationships, going over each other's houses, seeing the parents hang out, and knowing that they have someone to lean on, it's just amazing. Also, there are scholarship opportunities for youth wheelchair basketball players, there’s 12+ universities that offer full scholarships for wheelchair basketball, so as the kids get older, our oldest player is 15 right now, as they get older success will come with those opportunities for higher education. 
 

What do you hope the people you serve get out of their experience?

I hope, first of all, that they develop relationships that they can keep as long as they want. I hope that they gain opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise had. I want them to live full, healthy, fulfilled lives. My goal is to add to their quality of life for everyone that participates with the Columbus Knights, be that an athlete, parent, or spouse. I want us to be able to energize and accelerate their growth as people, and as players. Sports are great, and they allow us to compete, but the wins and losses don’t matter as much as the positive impact that we can make on people’s lives. 
 

As the organization has grown, how has your understanding of the community, family and children also grown?

It’s grown exponentially. I’m a sports nut, I was one of those people who felt like winning was it, if you don’t win you’re missing the mark. The kids have taught me just by the joy they come into the game with, that that isn’t the right attitude. So many life lessons can be taught using the game, for example, you teach a kid proper positioning to get a rebound and how to use their wheelchair in order to gain that position, and then something happens in life and you have to tell them that correlates to life too. You have to put yourself in a position, if you don’t get your goal immediately, you can rebound from that and put yourself in a different position to get that goal. 
 

What legacy do you hope to leave through your work?

I just want to have a positive impact among people. I want, when these kids grow up, to be able to say, “I had a coach that believed in me, that pushed me to be my best,” and then I want them to go on to do that for other people. The legacy that I want to leave, is I want to give as many people as many opportunities as possible. And I want them to know that they can always talk to me, they can count on me to be present. If a kid needs me to be somewhere, I’ll be there. I just want to be available to them at all times and I want to be someone in this world that they can count on and they can talk to without fear of judgement. Overall, I want to be that confidant and mentor that I didn’t have.