Five years after the limousine accident that took her left leg and part of her hip, Molly Bloom is thriving as a wheelchair athlete.
Her wheelchair basketball team, the Lady Rolling Nuggets, won the 2011 National Wheelchair Basketball Championships last month with a dramatic score in the final 10 seconds of the game. A photograph from that game shows Bloom with her game face on, looking fierce and tough.
“I used to be really reserved and shy and apprehensive, and I lost so much of that when I started playing wheelchair basketball,” Bloom says. This month, she graduates from the University of Colorado, where she majored in linguistics, with a minor in Nordic studies.
Mentally, emotionally and physically, she feels far removed from the timid girl she remembers being at East High School and for the first year or so following the accident.
In public, she showed pluck and determination, skiing on sit-skis, swinging herself up climbing walls and swimming. She traveled abroad, using her crutches and prosthetic leg in New Zealand, where she studied Maori and explored the Moeraki Boulders. She spent a semester in Sweden and visited Tonga, where she floated in the shallow sea.
But she still felt self-conscious, hesitant to voice her opinions because she worried that listeners might not agree or understand.
“But you can’t be shy or quiet when you’re playing wheelchair basketball,” Bloom says.
“I think a lot of that is from being around my teammates. All of them have huge personalities, and none of them is shy at all. When you play wheelchair basketball, you’re constantly communicating with your team on the court and off.”
Withdrawn in high school
That’s a contrast to her experience on East High School’s swim team, before the accident. As the youngest member of the team, she often felt ignored by her teammates. That only encouraged her tendency to withdraw.
But wheelchair basketball, says teammate Christina Ripp, “has definitely brought Molly out of her shell.
“Getting involved in sports after something like Molly’s accident can open doors for you,” Ripp says.
“Knowing that other people have been through the same things really helps a lot of people getting over the fact that they’re newly disabled. Even for myself and others, just going to practice can be a bright point if you’re having a down day. It’s almost like a support group sometimes.”
Rolling Lady Nuggets coach Justin Obermeyer, who calls Bloom “a natural competitor,” agrees.
“I was very angry after my accident for about a year,” he said.
“You don’t communicate well when you’re angry. Nobody wants to talk to someone who’s so bitter. What helped me, personally, was wheelchair basketball, and I’m glad it’s helped Molly. It’s tough love. What good is it going to do you to mope about it? I wish I’d never been in an accident, but I was, and so what will I do now? You gotta pull yourself out of that, and that’s where it’s nice to have teammates.”
And what teammates. This year’s Rolling Lady Nuggets team included five award-winning paralympic athletes, including teammate Ripp.
“The caliber of her teammates has been a challenge and a blessing,” Obermeyer said.
“But one thing about Molly: She’s an incredibly fast learner. She picked up the game really quickly. If she sticks with it — and I totally want her to stick with it — she has unreached potential she’ll get only through experience.”
Reflective moments
What wheelchair basketball has taught Bloom goes beyond deftly handling her wheelchair and improving her dribbling and blocking skills. Conversations with her teammates proved illuminating and inspiring. She admires her teammates’ brutal honesty as highly as she regards their considerable athletic prowess.
Among one of the most telling moments happened when the team was traveling to a game in New Mexico. Teammate Patty Cisneros was recounting something that able-bodied friends sometimes told her.
“Sometimes, people will be, like, ‘I forgot you’re in a wheelchair,’ ” Cisneros told Bloom.
“I know they mean that as a compliment, but that’s part of who I am.”
Pretending it didn’t exist, Cisneros said, was like pretending that she wasn’t female or athletic.
Her words burrowed into Bloom’s thoughts. She began thinking about the similarities between having a disability and being a member of a tribe.
Is there a culture of disability, she wondered, like the deaf culture that grew around the beliefs, values and shared institutions of people whose lives are affected by being deaf?
“It made me reconsider what it means to be disabled,” Bloom said.
“Is a disabled identity like any other minority culture? I think people should embrace it. Instead of saying, ‘Wow, she’s really overcome a lot to live a normal life again,’ I think we should look at the culture of disability. This is something I’d like to write a Ph.D thesis about.”
