#

NEWS

Every victory has a beginning

Unicamp's tradition with Paralympic sports contributed to the consolidation of adapted sports

authorship
image editing
#
University extension projects and sporting events contribute to the development of Paralympic sport (photos: Antonio Scarpinetti)


Unicamp's tradition of promoting sports for people with disabilities began with a simple initiative: offering a subject open to any student interested in physical activities. The project was initiated by professor José Luiz Rodrigues, from FEF. This is how the subject “Physical Education within the Reach of Everyone” emerged in 1987. Initially, it was not aimed at people with disabilities, but the demand at the University drew attention to the potential that existed there. 

"The first person who showed up to register for the subject was a wheelchair-bound student, from the Social Sciences course. She said: 'I would love to do physical activities, but at school I was exempt'. I assured her that she would have space there", recalls José Luiz . Other students with disabilities joined the group and participated in activities that began as games, moving on to guided recreation, until they acquired the format of sport.  

#
Unicamp hosted important scientific events dedicated to adapted physical activities (photo: Antonio Scarpinetti)


Other FEF teachers began to develop adapted activity projects. In addition to José Luiz, Edison Duarte, Ana Isabel Figueiredo, Paulo Ferreira de Araújo and José Júlio Gavião de Almeida sought new knowledge in the area to provide sporting opportunities for people with disabilities and teach Physical Education students how to work with this audience.

"When I studied Physical Education, the course had a technical nature, something common at the time. Until the early 1990s, most teachers had this type of training", reports Júlio Gavião. Between new theoretical approaches and sports practices, students and professors expanded the possibilities of professional activity and included more people in the life of the University. “In my classes I said that, as you prepare to work with people with disabilities, you are ready to work with anyone", reflects José Luiz. 

#
Research carried out by Unicamp provides the basis for the training of new coaches and athletes (photo: Antonio Scarpinetti)


From 1990 onwards, during Professor Ademir Gebara's tenure at the head of the FEF, a reorganization of the faculty made it possible to create the Department of Adapted Physical Activity Studies (Deafa), a pioneering initiative among the country's universities. This boosted the offer of disciplines, specialization courses and a line of research in the unit's master's and doctoral courses. “Our college was the first to offer training focused on adapted sports, from undergraduate to doctorate”, summarizes Edison Duarte. 

Another determining aspect were the extension projects offered to the community. In addition to bringing people with disabilities to the University and providing students with experiences different from those in the classroom, adapted modalities took shape and are now present at the Paralympic Games. There was also important promotion of sports competitions in partnership with entities such as the Paralympic Committee and the Brazilian Confederation of Sports for the Visually Impaired (CBDV). In 1998, teachers and students actively participated in the organization of the first 5-a-side World Football Championship, which, due to bad weather, was transferred from the Barão Geraldo campus to the city of Paulínia. 

The same happened with the training of para-athletes in the country. "Today we have approximately 120 wheelchair fencers in Brazil. For comparison purposes, Canada has less than 50. In the Olympic Games, Brazil never won a medal in this discipline. In the Paralympics, we won a gold medal in London, in 2012, and a silver one in Tokyo. All of this was born within Unicamp", points out Edison Duarte. 

"The University makes enormous leaps when it goes outside its walls, bringing knowledge”, reflects Júlio Gavião. “The same happens when it brings knowledge and experiences that are outside”. The tradition of training professionals with technical skills and necessary sensitivity to promote inclusion, Paralympic sport and science broke boundaries, reaching different regions of the country and Latin America. 

From Unicamp to the world

It was with the encouragement of her mother, who had completed a master's degree in Literature at Unicamp, that Marília Magno left Belém to be a specialization student in Orthopedics and Traumatology at the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM). Graduated in Physiotherapy, she had the opportunity to work with people with disabilities as a volunteer in parasports competitions. 

"That sporting world enchanted me, I decided to study something related to the area. To my surprise, I discovered that Unicamp was a birthplace of sport for people with disabilities and adapted physical activity", he says. Marília started to get involved with the College's projects and act as a volunteer in events promoted by the Paralympic Committee. In 2008, she enrolled in a master's degree in Physical Education. "I was able to link the experience of sport with research, I developed a path of studying sports injuries in Paralympic sport." 

Involvement in postgraduate activities took Marília to destinations that went beyond the Belém-Campinas route. During the organization of a conference on adapted physical activities, he was invited to further his studies at the University of Bath, in England. The period could not have been more favorable for the doctoral candidate: shortly after completing her internship at the university, she joined the team of professionals who worked at the London Paralympic Games in 2012, with the British Paralympic Association. 

#
Marília Magno: "I was able to link the experience of sport with research." Researcher developed part of her doctorate in London and participated in the 2012 Paralympic Games (photos: personal collection)

Marília is currently a professor at the Faculty of Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). In addition to sharing with her students the experiences provided by Unicamp, she took with her the spirit of pioneering. In partnership with a FEF postgraduate colleague, Anselmo de Athayde Silva, she organized the first postgraduate program in Human Movement Sciences in the North region, including a line of research aimed at people with disabilities. It also develops projects with the aim of bringing UPFA closer to regional Paralympic sport, in order to adapt to the Amazonian reality. 

"Unicamp makes us have this perspective. Since my time as a special student, I was enchanted by arriving at FEF and taking rugby and wheelchair fencing classes, and seeing that the students were the ones who accomplished all of this. The teachers were there as coordinators , but it was the students who set up and applied the training", highlights Marília. She hopes to be able to replicate in Pará the learning obtained at Unicamp: "I can't think of developing good research without being linked to extension". 

Cristián Luarte can also take his experience with Paralympic sport to other regions, in this case South America. In his doctorate at FEF, he had the support of Unicamp professors to create the first postgraduate course in physical activities and adapted sports in Chile. Thanks to the initiative, the San Sebástian University, in the city of Concepción, became a training center for Physical Education professionals dedicated to working with people with disabilities. 

"Little by little, we gave impetus to the development of this area, and we developed guidelines for the training of new professionals in the country. Today we already have a good number of trained people carrying out important work", explains Cristián. As in Brazil, the project also seeks to strengthen ties with institutions that support people with disabilities, such as Teletón Chile and the government of the Administrative Region of Bío-Bío, where the university is located.  

Cristián highlights that learning at Unicamp encouraged him to create bridges between Latin American countries, in the quest to integrate the continent through inclusion: “Some of our students are already part of the Chilean Paralympic Committee and are also linked to other committees, such as the Brazilian. Last year, we had a group of graduates who also went to Unicamp, with whom we formed the South American Federation of Adapted Physical Activity, which aims to include all countries in South America".

Given the examples that illustrate Unicamp's tradition of promoting Brazilian and South American Paralympic sport, the FEF's associate director, professor Odilon Roble, analyzes the unit's vocation of training qualified people with sensitivity to inclusion: “The Department of Adapted Physical Activity has a historical relationship with adapted sport, it trained several athletes, provided technical support for competitions, and was a training ground for coaches. We have excellence and vocation in training people." 

JU-online cover image
Brazilian Paralympic sport

twitter_icofacebook_ico