It might sound like an unlikely pairing, but a Canadian is helping bring Para hockey to Mexico.
Tyler McGregor, captain of Canada’s silver-winning squad at last month’s world championships, held six sessions in Mexico City in April and is hoping to grow the game further in Latin America.
For the 31-year-old McGregor, beyond what happened on the ice, it was an opportunity to learn, and make further disability community connections internationally.
“I think, in addition to introducing people to the sport of Para hockey and getting them involved in sport, it was also an opportunity to kind of learn and understand what their accessibility rights are like and and to be able to, I think, provide more of an opportunity for young people, or people of all ages, with disabilities in Mexico to have the opportunity to enjoy sport like we get to here at home,” said McGregor, who listed support from LosVGK — a charitable endeavour of the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights — multiple American players, and a host of local organizations.
The idea for the camps was first conceived during a demo of the sport in Michigan with fellow Para athletes Josh Pauls, captain of the U.S. team, Karina Villegas, a player from the U.S. who is originally from Venezuela, and Eric Hammerstrom, a Para sport advocate who works with the Urban Hockey Foundation and the Carnegie Initiative.
“Karina was just telling us, it’s always been a dream of hers to bring our sport to Latin America,” said McGregor, from Forest, Ont. “Probably a month or two later, Eric reached back out and said, ‘hey, do you, do you want to do this? Do you want to try to bring Para hockey to Latin America?’ And we, all of us, right away, we’re like, yes, absolutely, let’s do it.”
Para sport has a long history of working to support international development beyond the field of play as there is a large disparity between countries like those in the Americas and much of Europe and those in the developing world.
Part of that is equipment cost — McGregor estimated the cost of sleds and sticks needed for the event to be $12,000 — but another is educating and supporting people with disabilities in other countries to increase their independence and standard of living.
Some countries with burgeoning Para sport programs, such as Qatar, have limited frameworks for disability rights. Jess Markt is one of the people leading efforts to change that through Para sport. His work began in earnest when, in 2009, he answered the call to fly from his home in the U.S. to coach a wheelchair basketball team in Afghanistan. It was his first time coaching. From there, having trained a group of athletes who had never seen basketball before, let alone wheelchair basketball, and making a commitment to come back after a short stint, his aspirations grew.
“From the very beginning, my goal was to create programs that would grow, evolve, build local knowledge and eventually not require input, or as much input anyway, from the outside,” Markt said. “That they would eventually take these over and be able to keep these running themselves, just like you see in the U.S., Canada and many other places in the western world.”
“In the places where we work, which are usually conflict zones, places dealing with present or immediate past conflict, I feel like it has an even more critical role to play, particularly in breaking down stigma surrounding disability, building up confidence and the understanding that people with disabilities have of their own potential,” Markt said.
To accomplish that goal in the places where Markt’s team operates — including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syria — he connects with a point-person on the ground to help. During his first experiences, like in Afghanistan, Markt thought he was going there for a one-off to teach and leave. In the end, it was the opposite. Now, making sure there is the possibility for sustained momentum is core to his approach.
“If you want something to be sustainable, it can’t just be parachute in, give some knowledge, and then take off,” Markt said.
Despite the needs on the ground in developing nations, there can be a tendency in Para sport to hyperfocus on the elite level. Most sport funding models, including Canada’s, rely on the money and prestige filtering down from the Paralympic Games.
Kristina Molloy, the chief membership and impact officer at the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), said the organization is committed to helping Para sport grow at all levels, with a first-of-its-kind impact report expected later this year. For her, part of that is showcasing the change that Para sport can create in the 133 countries where they have a presence as well as collaborating with broad international partners like the World Health Organization and UNESCO.
“All of us who have been involved in Para sport, we inherently know the impact, the power, not just on individuals, but on community, on society, in terms of perceptions changing, barrier being removed, all of these different components,” she said. “But it’s not enough for us to just have great stories to tell.”
While that impact can and does look like more opportunities for athletes to compete, Molloy said in the development work the IPC has been involved in over the past decade, there has been a real focus on creating spaces for coaches, classifiers, and referees to develop as well. In some cases, this is very grassroots.
Molloy, who got her start in Para sport while being part of the organizing committee for Vancouver 2010, mentioned one story where the local head of a country’s Paralympic committee, in a place where many disabled people are hidden from view, was going door-to-door.
“He was the guy with the pickup truck, and there were coaches that were ready and an opportunity to play sport, and he would go around the community and actually find people with a disability, and in some cases, for the first time, actually get them out of their homes to be able to participate in sport,” Molloy said. “And in doing that, all of a sudden there was a connection point within the community. There was greater acceptance from the community. And then these were all the kind of knock-on benefits that came from that.”
Those benefits aren’t small. Markt estimates that in the 16 years since he first went to Afghanistan, there are now 700 to 800 wheelchair basketball players in the country. That impact isn’t limited to developing nations. According to the IPC, 125 million Euros ($195.5 million Cdn) was invested in France’s accessibility infrastructure because of the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics in Paris.
McGregor is hopeful that the 20-30 people he saw participate per session in Mexico will lead to further growth toward a national development system and, perhaps, a ticket to the world championships. As for his group of collaborators, they’re exploring bringing the sport to Chile and Argentina. He sees countries like Thailand as ones on a similar trajectory as the Mexican team as they navigate what it means to develop a program from scratch.
“I think they have the right people in place, and I think the interest within their program to make that happen [is there], and I’m excited to watch their growth,” he said. “I’m actually excited to go back at some point … and help with their program and just just follow along with their progress.”
