We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ramsey Sullivan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ramsey, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
I have been a Special Education for 23 years, and a coach for 28 years. I have always said “I like teaching, but I love coaching”. Going back over 100 years, sports has always been a big thing in my family. I have taken great care to make sure this passion was passed down to all three of my children. The youngest of my three children has an IEP (Individualized Education Plan). In layman’s terms, he is a special education student. He has ADHD and anxiety. The child you would see now, on the baseball field, wresting mat or football field, is not the same kid you would have seen only a few years ago. He would run off the field, mat or court in tears, overwhelmed by the anxiety in his little body. As a coach, former player, but most importantly father, I knew it was my responsibility to help my little guy the only way I knew how. Through sports. People who don’t live the world of sports the way I do just probably think of sports as a great outlet for exercise. but there’s so much more to it than that. Sports can build you up (or tear you down, if done wrong), teach you to respect yourself, you body and your mind. The confidence that it could give a young person is remarkable, and I knew that’s what my son needed. From the time he was in pre-school, we spent countless hours playing everything and anything I could think of. Baseball has always been my favorite sport, so obviously much of the time was spent on that. But we ran up hills, put on boxing gloves, played football, push ups, pull ups and too many other thing to name. After two years of all this play and learning, my wife told me I need to take what I am doing with our younger son and bring it to other special needs kids. She saw and she believed, which in turn helped me believe I could do this. She was right (as she usually is), and almost two years later Abled Athletes has worked with dozens of special needs kids from the New York and New Jersey area. This is a dream come true for me. I get to help make the lives of young people better through sports.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Parents want their children involved in sports. Even if they themselves were not the greatest of athletes, they understand the importance it plays in todays society. I have heard from countless parents, “we tried to put him/her on a team, but it just didn’t work out”. The child did nothing wrong, and the coach did nothing wrong. It just that the coach did not know how to work with children with special needs. That is where Abled Athletes enters the equation. I take this child out of the mainstream sports group and teach them either 1:1 or in small groups with other neurodiverse children.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
When I think of my “market” I feel like I am the only one in the market. People train athletes all over the world, and people work with special needs children all over the world. But I felt that the special needs population was grossly underserved when it came to the ability of the neurodiverse child to participate in mainstream sports. I am a New York State certified special education and physical education teacher, a very rare combination. I have been teaching special education classes for almost 25 years, and have been coaching sports teams for almost 30 years.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Sports has always been front and center in Sullivan family life. My father was sentenced to life in prison when I was 5 years old. He died there 34 years later when I was 39. Although our relationship was not perfect during those years, we always had sports. We would talk about games, past, present or future. We would “bet” on games where the loser would owe the winner 25 push-ups. I vowed early in life that I would coach every team, every game that I possibly could for all three of my kids. I wanted to give them what my father couldn’t give to me or my brother. His time. Now I take my gift of time and love of sports and pass it on to children through Abled Athletes.
Contact Info:
- Website: AbledAthletesNY.com AbledAthletesNJ.com
- Instagram: abledathletes
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