Oakland University Professor Dr. Kate Rougeau has been selected as the team leader of the 2023 USA Women’s Under 25 World Championship wheelchair basketball team. Rougeau hopes to bring the knowledge and skills she learns from this position back to the campus community to educate students on inclusion.
Dr. Rougeau has an impressive breadth of experience in adaptive sports programs. In 2008, she became involved in adaptive sports after coaching a local wheelchair basketball team in Southfield. Rougeau also held a Graduate Assistant (GA) position at the University of Illinois, where she worked with the men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball programs.
After coaching at multiple levels of wheelchair basketball, Rougeau felt inspired to apply to work at the Paralympic level.
“Just seeing individuals [wheelchair basketball athletes] reach their potential and going past that at some points has been awesome,” Dr. Rougeau said. “We see ourselves, and we set goals, and we try to meet them. These are athletes that are sometimes looked at as being less than because they may have a disability, but they are stellar human beings.”
As the team leader, Rougeau is primarily responsible for logistics.
“My job duties consist of booking flights to and from the overtraining center for all 20 plus athletes and staff, making sure that they have their accommodations necessary with flying and checking in their chairs,” Dr. Rougeau said. “I want to make sure that the players are ready to perform at their utmost peak condition.”
Rougeau describes herself as a team-oriented person who loves to see her athletes’ hard work pay off. She recognizes many individuals with physical disabilities are limited when pursuing athletics. Rougeau hopes to make adaptive sports more accessible to OU students and local community members.
“I see sport and physical activity as a fundamental right, like accessibility to parks and being able to be a kid,” Dr. Rougeau said. “In the past, I have led many adaptive sports programs at the Oakland University Recreation and Wellbeing Center [OU RecWell], so I hope to bring more programming to campus this year.”
Rougeau uses her experiences with disabled populations to educate her students in the Health Sciences department. She primarily focuses on topics that involve universal design, equitable wellness for diverse populations and disability culture. Rougeau is also a part of an OU task force working to design a disability studies program.
Although Rougeau has a wealth of knowledge of the disabled community, she believes it’s important to ensure individuals of various abilities have a voice when discussing topics about the community.
“I bring in a lot of guest lecturers. It’s not my place to speak for individuals if I don’t have individuals with a disability at the table while we’re having this conversation,” Dr. Rougeau said. “If I’m not including individuals with disabilities in the discussion, it’s not inclusive.”
For more information about the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF), visit the organization’s website. The 2023 IWBF Women’s Under 25 Wheelchair Basketball World Championship games will be live-streamed from October 3 to 9 on the IWBF YouTube channel.
