‘That was our coming out party’: For Michigan adaptive track and field, the 2024 Miller Family Open was years in the making

The near-unstoppable, universal force of athletic competition finally met its match in 2020. With a global pandemic ravaging communities, even high-level professional leagues came screeching to a halt. But as the preponderance of the sports community sat on the sidelines, a duo of then-freshmen at Michigan were just getting started.

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Madeline Gustafson and Cathryn Gray made their way to the tennis courts where a wheelchair tennis practice was set to take place. It was their first semester of college in 2020, and they were searching for some semblance of normalcy in a world turned upside down. And as both athletes have cerebral palsy, a neurological condition that affects movement and coordination, they turned to adaptive sports as an outlet.

But neither Gustafson nor Gray were there to play wheelchair tennis: The duo was at the courts for track and field practice.

As the wheelchair tennis practice commenced, Gustafson and Gray squeezed into the sidelines, doing shuttle steps and running sprints in the limited space they were granted. The situation obviously fell far short of ideal — the 78 feet of a tennis court isn’t conducive for high-level track and field training. But with no access to proper facilities — owned by either the University or the community — the pair of freshmen had to make do.

“It was the first time I’d been exposed to adaptive sports in general,” Gustafson told The Michigan Daily. “And at this point, it was during covid, so even though there were talks of wheelchair basketball, the only thing that was happening was wheelchair tennis because it was no-contact. … So it was like, ‘Okay, we’ll practice alongside them.’ ”

Yet, seemingly through the cracks of the tennis courts they were practicing on, something began to grow. The determination and passion that Gustafson and Gray — the sole members of the adaptive track and field team at the time — demonstrated as freshmen became the fulcrum of an exponentially-growing adaptive track and field program. 

Within months, the program was granted access to the indoor track and field facilities at the University, albeit just a couple of days per week. And in the summer of 2021, the program hired the first head coach for the adaptive track and field team. In just about a year, the team went from just two members practicing on the side of a tennis court to having full weekday access to varsity facilities. 

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More than four years later, in early 2024, the adaptive track and field team’s numbers had swelled into the double digits. Its growth was staggering, yet there was one more hurdle in front of the program: They still had yet to host an adaptive track and field meet at the University of Michigan.

“One of the burning questions that we’ve been asked over the last four years as we’ve started making our appearance and making our debut on the Para-track and field scene has been, ‘When is the University of Michigan going to host a track and field meet?’ ” Assistant Director of Adaptive Sports and Fitness Erik Robeznieks told The Michigan Daily.

After four years of growing the program and its outreach, the 2024 Miller Family Open was announced. Named after University of Michigan alum and pioneer in the conjunction of disabilities and sports, Adam Miller, the event was created to be unique and boundary-pushing. 

On Saturday, June 29, the storm clouds had come and gone over the varsity track and field stadium in Ann Arbor, and the sun began to peek out from behind the gray. The 2024 Miller Family Open was underway.

“I mean, the energy and the atmosphere of the facility (Saturday) at the outdoor track and field stadium was just electric,” Robeznieks said. “And it was truly amazing having been part of the program myself for the past four years, to see where we’ve come from and to see where we’re going.”

Alongside the University of Michigan athletes, a total of 93 athletes competed in the inaugural event of its kind: Athletes with physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities and able-bodied participants all took to competition — superficially opposed on the surface, but connected by a common goal underneath.

While the athletes are competitors on the track and in the field, there is a mutual understanding of the impact of the mere fact that they are competing. As adaptive sports fight to gain traction and recognition on both the national and global scale, the opportunity to compete at a high level isn’t lost on anyone involved.

“This space is too special. This space is too fresh, it’s too new, for us to be competitors, both on and off the pitch, both on and off the court.” Robeznieks said. “There needs to be collaboration.”

Athletes from the University of Alabama, University of Arizona and San Diego State University made the trek to Ann Arbor to compete as well. All of these schools have made noise in the adaptive sports world and have solidified themselves as premier programs in the field. With these other Universities at their side, the Wolverines set their sights on becoming one of the premier programs as well.

With coach Calvin Sullins at the helm, helping coordinate the Miller Family Open as well as prepare his athletes to perform at the highest level, while Robeznieks worked behind the scenes, Michigan’s adaptive track and field’s first hosted event went off without a hitch.

“I think the 2024 Miller Family Open was an incredibly impactful event for the community here in Ann Arbor to demonstrate that this is sport, these are athletes,” Robeznieks said. “I think really, yesterday was our coming out party in some sense, especially within adaptive track and field.”

From the athletes, to the officials, to the volunteers all the way to the spectators, the 2024 Miller Family Open was a direct result of a few individuals’ dedication to bringing adaptive sports to the forefront of the public consciousness. 

From the grassroots beginnings on the side of the tennis courts to hosting an event with athletes and officials representing 32 unique states, the past four years have produced explosive progress far beyond even what Gustafson could have imagined in 2020.

“Oh gosh, no,” Gustafson said when asked if she could have predicted the current state of the program back in 2020. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into, for lack of a better way to put it. I couldn’t predict this much growth and this much excitement around this. … I couldn’t have predicted it at all, and it’s just such a wonderful thing to be a part of.”

The buzz surrounding adaptive track and field at Michigan is at an all-time high, and the program has no plans of slowing down. Even as Gustafson and Gray have graduated and moved on, what they left behind in their wake survives. From the tennis court sidelines to the varsity track stadium, adaptive track and field at Michigan is just getting started.

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