Disabled Sports USA

Wintergreen Adaptive Skiing is a 501(c)3 organization whose mission is to share the joys of alpine skiing and snowboarding with children and adults with a disability. We have recently added summer programming with the initiation of a summer kayaking and canoeing program. Our secondary mission is to provide volunteer opportunities for teenagers. both able-bodied and with disabilities; to empower teenagers with the sense that they can truly make a difference in their world. Our mission is to offer the benefits of sport (the physical, cognitive and emotional) and the support of the disabiled sport community, to individuals with a disability.
Wintergreen Adaptive Skiing's mission is to share the joys of alpine skiing, snowboarding, and now year-round sports, with children and adults with a disability.

Wintergreen Adaptive Sports' mission is to improve the lives of children, teenagers and adults with a disability through teaching the skills of outdoor sport and recreation.

WAS was founded in 1996 at Wintergreen Resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Over the course of its 14 year history, WAS has developed an instructional staff of over 100 volunteers (over 30 of them are high school-aged junior instructors). It offers ski and snowboard instruction to individuals with a wide range of disabilities seven days a week from mid-December to mid-March and offers kayak and canoe instruction over the summer months.

In the 2008-09 season, WAS taught over 600 half-day snow sport lessons while over 200 of them were to children and teenagers. In addition, WAS anticipates teaching approximately 40 paddling lessons to children this summer.

WAS' facilities and equipment have grown to include a small slopeside building at Wintergreen Resort, a small boat storage shed, boat trailer and wheelchair accessible ramp to our boat launching area at Wintergreen's Lake Monocan, and a large inventory of adaptive snow sport and paddling equipment.

WAS is also proud of its year-round Wounded Warrior Disabled Sport Project in which it offers the joy of outdoor sport to our injured military personnel coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.