By Vicki Prichard
NKyTribune reporter
Several years ago Jake Counts, a 1996 graduate of Holmes High School, ran into someone at a local grocery store who invited him to play basketball. Accepting that invitation would take him around the globe.
After an injury in a train wreck put Counts in a wheelchair, he spent the next six years, from age 13, without adaptive sports; a tough adjustment for a young man.
That invitation to play basketball spurred opportunities that led him to play wheelchair basketball in college. Eventually it took him to a basketball court in Rome, Italy, playing international wheelchair basketball.
It was while playing in Italy that Counts met teammate Ian Lynch, from Minneapolis. Lynch began playing wheelchair basketball when he was eight years old after a back injury. Nearly a decade later, the two remain teammates, not as players, but as coaches for the Cincinnati Dragons Wheelchair Basketball team.
Founded in 2014, the Dragons compete in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s Prep Division and are part of the Midwest Conference. Players range from seven to 14 years old and have a variety of disabilities.
With Counts and Lynch at the helm, the players are led by some impressive talent. In addition to their college and international basketball careers, both are paralympians. Lynch will compete in the 2016 Olympics in September in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Ian Smith, a fellow Holmes High School alumnus, joins Counts and Lynch in connecting people with disabilities to recreation through the Greater Cincinnati Adapted Sports Club. The Cincinnati Dragons are the flagship program of the nonprofit organization.
“We want to get the word out so there’s not six years of missing time (like Counts),” says Smith, who lives in Taylor Mill. “Sports are huge for a competitive person, and someone who wants to be part of a team.”
The Cincinnati Dragons have scheduled a fundraiser, Saturday, March 19, to help the team pay for travel expenses to the National Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in Louisville in April. The event begins at 7 p.m. at Braxton Brewing Company, located at 27 West 7th Street in Covington.
The evening features the local jazz quartet, Rags to Riches, door prizes, a raffle and split the pot. The band Common Center will perform at 11:30 p.m., bringing psychedelic gypsy rock to the party to cap off the night.
Braxton Brewing will donate a percentage of each beer sold throughout the night to the Greater Cincinnati Adapted Sports Club to help the Dragons compete at the tournament.
Smith and Counts reconnected through Skool Aid, a disability awareness program founded by Smith. The program offers a team of instructors to provide afterschool, summer and supplemental school incentive programs to area schools,
When Counts returned to Northern Kentucky, he and Smith worked together to create a disability awareness presentation through Skool Aid.
“We started getting interconnected and realized there wasn’t a wheelchair basketball team here, so we started the Cincinnati Dragons,” says Smith. “The first year we had 13 kids playing ball for the first time.”
Smith says they hope the event at Braxton Brewing will help spread the word about adaptive sports, and raise money to help offset costs for players and families to travel to the national tournament.
“I’m from Covington and I want someone who grows up in that same socioeconomic experience to play basketball and be part of a team,” says Smith. “It’s about getting the awareness out.”
Tickets for the Cincinnati Dragons fundraiser at Braxton Brewing Company are $20 at the door and are available online here .