A TV voice called to Dr. Lisa Maddox on lazy Saturday afternoons when she was growing up in the 1970s.
“Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports — the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat,” said Jim McKay, the Emmy-Award winning sportscaster as he introduced ABC’s Wide World of Sports.
The allure of different sports intrigued a young Maddox and impacted her life. Decades later, Maddox, who lives in Grovetown, Georgia just outside of Augusta, is a world-class wheelchair athlete competing in multiple sports at national and international levels.
Credit: Mike Adams
Credit: Mike Adams
In July, she brought home her first gold medal in pickleball in the sport’s debut at the National Veterans Wheelchair games in Portland, Ore. Her softball team narrowly missed out on a bronze medal, but her play at first base drew enough votes to put her on the National Veterans Wheelchair All-Star team at the Wheelchair Softball World Series in August in Chicago.
But it all started with Wide World of Sports and two older brothers she wanted to emulate, she said. Tennis was one of those sports that piqued the siblings’ interest.
“I wanted to play, but there wasn’t anywhere around here to learn. I got involved with other things,” said Maddox, a graduate of Augusta’s Aquinas High School, where she played softball, basketball and with the boy’s baseball team.
After graduating high school, she went to the United States Military Academy West Point, playing basketball her freshman year. A new coach took over her sophomore year, and she decided to fully focus on her dream of becoming a physician instead of continuing with sports.
They would stay on the backburner for about 20 years.
In 2006, she lost her left leg above her knee to Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. It wasn’t too long before she returned to the sports she’d always loved, but this time from a wheelchair.
“Wheelchair basketball is the inaugural sport, and then you break off into other things,” said Maddox, who headed back to the court in 2008.
Maddox quickly knew the sport she’d excelled at in high school wasn’t going to work for her.
“I sucked at it,” she said. “If you’re an offensive-minded player, you use your legs to shoot; your arms are to guide the ball. When you’re in a wheelchair, you can’t use your legs. It showed me how weak my upper body was.”
After about two seasons of playing basketball, she tried the one sport that appealed to her years before when watching Wide World of Sports – tennis.
It has become her go-to sport ever since. In 2017, she was the No. 1 women’s amateur player in wheelchair tennis. Over the course of four years, she was on the winning side of 17 singles and doubles tournaments.
But the variety of sport McKay had touted called to her, especially after she attended VA sports clinics and discovered what’s available to wheelchair athletes.
She added wheelchair curling in 2019 and travels about two hours one way to Charlotte, N.C. to be part of a league.
Wheelchair curling has modified rules and is played on textured ice. Sweeping is a major part of non-wheelchair curling, but it doesn’t exist in the wheelchair version. Precision is key as the object is to get the stone closest to the center of the target, she said.
“Professional bowlers never aim at the front pin. They hook it, and that’s what curling is,” she said.
Curling has opened a lot of doors for Maddox, who has since retired from her position at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center. In October 2022, she traveled to Prague, where she and her team were part of the Czech Republic Bonspiel. They finished sixth out of 10, competing against teams from several countries including Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland and Kazakhstan.
The latest sport she’s added to her repertoire is wheelchair rugby league, which is different from quad rugby, sometimes known as “murder ball.”
“I loved it,” she said of rugby league. “It’s the most satisfying, gratifying sport.”
She was named to the USA Wheelchair Rugby League squad in August after being introduced to the sport over the summer.
About the Author