Last month, Niagara University’s men’s basketball team hosted their second annual Disability Awareness Night during a home game versus Marist. Dave Whalen, Project Director for the Institute on Disability Awareness at Niagara University, said this allows them to bring better understanding to people who are not aware of disabilities at all.
“Disability Awareness Night is allowing the community who oftentimes is not aware of disabilities in general, how they present, the programs that are out there to support individuals, the achievements that people with disabilities can have really just like anyone else.
Disability Awareness Night started in large part due to the request of Head Coach Greg Paulus urging Whalen to do it at a men’s basketball game.
“Disability Awareness night is really important for us. Our program does a lot of work in the community, whether it's making beds, whether it's bringing in money, raising money for different organizations, whether it's getting out in the community and being a part of the challenger’s baseball league. You know, for us, what we want to do is we want to develop our student athletes holistically, and part of the development process is away from the court. How can we be stewards? How can we serve other people? What can we learn from other people? And the best way to do that, from my experience, is to include and to educate.”
Disability Awareness night also allowed Whalen to highlight the university's Disability Studies minor and Institute on Disability Awareness. Programs that are not highly offered in the area.
“We were the first responder disability awareness training program. We have the nation's only training, comprehensive training for police officers now, probation officers, firefighters, emerging medical services, 911 telecommunicators. So those programs have been our signature programs. Here that was, again, was the office of the discipliners training office. So, the institute's launch has now allowed us to step into other avenues and other professions and topics.”
The university's athletics programs will continue to host disability awareness nights. The men's ice hockey team was the most recent team to host such a night.
