In this episode, we’re joined by Patrick Parkes and Nick Taylor from USA Boccia. Both are boccia athletes as well as members of USA Boccia’s board of directors. They share valuable perspectives on the sport and its unique adaptability for athletes of all abilities. Patrick Parkes has been playing boccia since 2016 and has gone on to win bronze, silver, and gold medals at the regional, national, and international level for USA Boccia and the U.S. National Team. Nick Taylor has an extensive history playing wheelchair tennis at all levels and started playing boccia around 2018. In that time, he’s played for the U.S. National Team and won several national titles.
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More about Boccia
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Episode Transcript
Quick Navigation (click the linked text below to jump to a new section)
- Intro
- Patrick and Nick describing the basics of boccia
- How they identify and develop players and how players find out about opportunities like USA Boccia
- The recent boccia nationals at Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama
- Where boccia is growing
- Advice from Patrick and Nick for aspiring athletes
- Health and wellness tips for boccia athletes
- Their final thoughts
Host: 0:00
This is Wellness, Health and Everything Else: a NCHPAD Podcast.
Welcome to Wellness, Health and Everything Else: a NCHPAD Podcast. NCHPAD is the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability – the nation’s premier center dedicated to promoting the health and wellness of everyone. In each episode, we explore topics at the intersection of health, wellness and mobility limitations. If you have an idea for a topic, would like to learn more about a topic or are interested in our free resources, programs and partnership opportunities, email us at nchpad@uab.edu, give us a call at 866-866-8896 or check out our website at nchpad.org.
Music Interlude
Host 00:51
In this episode, we talk with Patrick Parkes and Nick Taylor of USA Boccia. Patrick and Nick are both boccia athletes and are on the board of directors for USA Boccia. They both provided some excellent insight into this sport and its adaptability to all players. To get the episode started, we wanted to know more about USA Boccia and where it all started.
Patrick Parkes: 1:11
So, USA Boccia, as an organization, was founded officially in 2015. So, we just celebrated our 10th anniversary, a very exciting time for us. USA Boccia, as an organization, focuses on building awareness and opportunities around the sport of boccia in the United States. So, what that looks like is providing information and resources to individual athletes, teams and clubs through information, clinics, local competitions, regional competitions and our national competition as well, which happens every year.
Nick Taylor: 1:55
What I think I would add to that is that while it’s been around for 10 years as an official organization, the sport has been around in the U.S. for way longer than that. I mean, I don’t even know what the official first year was (or if there was), but you’re going back, clear into the ‘80s. I know that when I was a little kid, I was at an event in Kansas City in the ‘80s that had boccia at it. So, a lot of the folks within the USA Boccia organization were folks who have been around it literally since then. And then the other aspect of the sport is the high-performance side of the sport, which is our NGB, which is hosted by Lakeshore, which is called Boccia United States. So, they are by NGB, that’s the National Governing Body. They are the ones that host our national team and provide funding for our national team to go to international events. While they don’t sanction any tournaments within the U.S.—national tournaments within the U.S., we actually are hosting an international event in the United States next year—but national tournaments do not fall under Boccia United States. Their job is the national team and trying to get us on the medal stand at lead-up events. And ultimately, the entire goal is L.A. 2028.
Patrick Parkes: 3:20
To Nick’s point about being around since the ‘80s and even earlier, boccia was recognized first as a Paralympic sport in 1984. And so, at the highest level, it’s been played at the Paralympics since ‘84.
Nick Taylor: 3:41
And then the last thing I think I would add with both organizations they play a very critical role in the sport within the United States. And they very closely work together finding athletes, moving them up through the athlete pipeline, where the ultimate goal is to get them on the team of Boccia United States. And I think a great example of that collaboration was the nationals that were hosted last week. That is officially USA Boccia’s event. But it was hosted at Lakeshore by Boccia United States, and both organizations worked very closely together through the whole thing.
Host: 4:21
Here are Nick and Patrick telling us about the basics of the sport.
Nick Taylor: 4:25
So, the sport of Boccia is a very interesting Paralympic sport because it is a sport that is for folks with disabilities who are significantly more disabled than a lot of other Paralympic sports. So, the vast majority of other Paralympic sports require, at a minimum, a very strong upper body, from wheelchair basketball to track and field, whatever. Boccia is really the one sport for folks with minimal physical ability in their upper body, but they’re still able to compete at a very, very high level. So, the sport of boccia has four classes at the international level. At the national level, we have more, but internationally, there’s BC1 and BC2, which are strictly individuals with cerebral palsy. In theory, although it’s very complicated to explain and even understand, BC1 athletes have a little bit less physical function than those in BC2. The BC3 division is for athletes who are significantly impacted by their disability. They use a ramp to propel the ball.
And they have what’s called a ramp operator. Now, the really cool thing with that is the ramp operator aims the ramp based on what the athlete tells them, left or right. And then the ramp operator places the ball on the ramp. The higher up on the ramp you put a ball, the further it’s going to roll out on the court. And conversely, the lower you put it. The ramp operator is also making sure to pick up whatever ball the athlete chooses because different balls are of different hardnesses, and it depends on what you’re trying to do. Now, with all that being said, it is an absolute rule that the ramp operator basically plays the entire game, other than in between ends when there’s any action actually happening, with their back turned. They don’t ever see the court. So, they just have to kind of read their athlete and the facial expressions, whether they made it or they missed, because the concept is they want it to be solely on the athlete—not on the ramp operator. That’s not to say the ramp operator is not massively important, because it is. They’ve got to do things exactly as they say, how they do, how they say, have a routine, and there’s also a time limit. But the ramp operator in the BC3 division does not ever get to see the court. So they’re not making any of those decisions. And then finally, the BC4 division is for people who are able to physically throw the ball, do not have cerebral palsy, but do have limited strength and/or range of motion. So those disabilities are muscular dystrophy, arthrogryposis, which is what I have, some spinal cord injuries, as well as some different lesser-known disabilities.
In terms of playing the sport, it is an accuracy-based game. There’s a white ball and then one side. When I say side, a side could mean an individual. a pair or even a team of three people. There are three different options in our sport that are played. One side is red. One side is blue. And the entire goal is just to get your color closer to the jack than the opponent. And the jack is the white ball. So, what happens is the game always starts off with red going first. Red throws the jack. They throw their first ball. And then blue throws until they get closer than red or run out of balls (which only have six). So once blue gets closer, now it goes back to red, and we go back and forth like that. And then let’s say I’m playing Patrick, I’m red, he’s blue, and Patrick only has one blue ball closer than my closest red ball. Well, then he gets one point. But if he were to have three, he would get three points. If he had all six, he would get six points.
The game is played on a court that is roughly the size of a pickleball court. So, it’s rectangular. It’s not really long and skinny like the Italian game of bocce is played on. You can put that jack wherever you want. There’s a line you have to get a pass, but that’s it. And then you can throw it as far back into the back of the court as you want. It’s all strategy, what you’re better at, what your opponent can’t do. And then the general rule is you’re going to always throw to your side of the court. The red is more on the left. And blue is more on the right. So, you’re going to throw to your side. And then an individual game consists of four ends. So, each person gets the jack twice. At the highest level, I think the biggest thing with this sport that is so important to understand, the difference [between] winning and losing isn’t like the distance of a couple of balls. It’s a millimeter here, a millimeter there. My ball is smashed and touching the jack. Their ball looks like it is, but when you put a flashlight down, there’s actually a half a millimeter gap. That is the difference [between] winning and losing at the high level. And then literally people piling balls on top of balls, climbing them and getting them to stick.
Patrick Parkes: 9:33
What I would add to what Nick said… there’s a lot you see on the surface, and it seems like a simple sport, trying to get your color closest to the white jack ball, the target ball. But there’s a lot of interchange that happens as you’re playing. So yes, you can place a ball closer to the target ball, but you can also change the scoring relationship by moving the jack ball back with a throw. And so that ball is then closer to your cluster of balls, or you can move an opponent’s ball off the jack or away from its position. So, there’s a lot of, I share all that to [say] that the score is calculated at the end of the end after all balls have been played, but there’s a lot of change that happens leading up to that point. So, you might go from up three to down one in one throw, as just one example. And so that’s kind of the strategy that plays in that people may look at it on the surface and think it’s simple and maybe, easy in a lot of ways, but as you really dive in further to the sport, you start to see all the different angles, all the different strategic considerations. What type of balls are you using? Are you using softer balls to place harder balls to move things? And so, it’s really the more you dive in, the more there is to learn.
Nick Taylor: 10:59
To follow up on that, at the highest level, it really is about thinking two to three balls ahead. It’s not just about what I am going to do right now. And it’s not just about getting closer to the jack. It’s having your balls closer to the Jack at the end of the end—not necessarily right at that moment. So, a phrase that we use is jack-centric for people who are usually early on in the sport. And they’re just so worried about getting closer to jack, and I don’t care how. I don’t care if it’s to the side or whatever. Whereas, for an example, if I’m able to put a ball, a half a ball away, but it’s to the side, like say to the left or the right of the jack, or I can have a ball that is three balls away from the jack, but directly in my opponent’s line and blocking their path, I would way rather have that. Because blocking their line, especially early on in the end, is much, much more important. Additionally, the last part that I would explain is how dynamic it is. Really, this used to only happen as much in the BC4 division, but it’s now happening across the board because everybody’s just getting so much better and stronger. Let’s say I throw the jack, and I started out at 2.8 meters, so very short. In the BC4 division internationally, the likelihood at the end of the end that it is still sitting at 2.8 meters is almost zero. It could be back to 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5, depending on who you’re playing and how much power they have. And if people just keep blowing it up because you block it so well and they don’t have anything else to do besides just throw a hard ball as hard as they can, it’s literally like a bomb going off. I mean, balls just go flying everywhere.
Patrick Parkes: 13:00
But I would say, too, just as a last kind of summary, I hope as we’ve pointed out with a variety of different strategies and tactics, and the variety of disabilities that we serve, boccia is to my mind, and I can speak specifically as someone with cerebral palsy, it was the only sport that allowed me to compete at a higher level as someone who couldn’t propel a manual wheelchair. We like to say boccia is the most inclusive sport on the Paralympic roster, not only because of the range of disabilities and strategies and strengths that it accommodates, but also because it can be played at the local and recreational levels. Able-bodied youth, for example, can play alongside their friends with disabilities too. And so, taking all of that into account, boccia really serves such a wide variety of athletes, and that’s why we really want to build awareness around it.
Host: 13:56
We asked how they identify and develop players. And if you’re a player, how do you find out about opportunities like USA Boccia?
Patrick Parkes: 14:03
I think the best place is to go to USA Boccia directly. So go to usaboccia.org, and there you’ll be able to find out more about the sport, more about equipment, about teams and clubs that are currently involved with the sport. You can connect with folks within our organization that will help to set up if you’re in an area that does not have an existing club. They can provide resources and also potentially clinics, et cetera, to help you set up a club within your local area. So, I would say USA Boccia is the chief source for all of that. And then another great place to connect, I think we mentioned it previously, is through our regional tournaments and our national tournament as well, too. So, we have a lot of athletes who come to a regional and sometimes even nationals, and it’s their first time competing. But the boccia family is very open, very willing to share information, very willing to kind of mentor new athletes and new teams, new groups that are coming into the fold. And so, I think my biggest thing I would say is just find us at USA Boccia, and we’ll connect you, usaboccia.org, and we’ll connect you with anybody who’s either already in your area or is close to your area and can help you take that next step to plug in.
Nick Taylor: 15:27
Yeah, I think the only other thing I would add—Patrick’s definitely nailed that answer—you ask about finding athletes and stuff. I think one of the bigger challenges with the sport is, and we kind of hit on this, that this is a sport that most folks couldn’t do another Paralympic sport because they don’t have the strength to be able to do it. And so with finding athletes, you can’t just go to other adaptive sporting events necessarily, I mean, you can find some that way, but it’s pretty hard because if they’re there playing wheelchair basketball, the chances that they’re even going to class into boccia isn’t super high, at least on the international scale. Within the national, they would, but internationally, because it is a sport for folks with more severe disabilities, it’s finding those people internationally that are going to fit into those classifications. And on top of that, which Patrick and I have discussed a lot, is that so many of these people, specifically families with kids that have cerebral palsy, or even more so, who are a BC3 player that has to use a ramp. Most of those kids’ lives, the last thing that they thought of their kid doing is being an athlete, and then being an elite-level athlete. And so, it’s connecting with those folks and saying, “Hey, this sport exists, and your son or daughter could play it at the absolute highest level and represent their country, you’ve got to explore it.” And so, I think that’s the big thing that we’re really trying to work on right now is connecting with more of those organizations that work with folks with cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, arthrogryposis, spinal cord injuries [and] letting them know the sport exists.
Host: 17:17
Recently, the Boccia Nationals were held at the Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama. Here are their summaries of the event.
Nick Taylor: 17:24
I think it was a huge success hosting nationals at Lakeshore for USA Boccia. At least since I’ve been playing, I think it was the highest number of athletes we’ve had. If not the highest, it was right at the same amount. I believe we had 84 athletes, which is tremendous. And that’s actual people competing. That’s not their ramp operators, their sport assistants, their PCAs. I mean, there were well over 200 people there, and coaches easily 200, if not even more than that. But Lakeshore is just such a special place because it is so focused on the disabled athlete. So, from accessibility, when we’re in planning calls and stuff like that, it’s getting walkthroughs of bathrooms and locker rooms and stuff to see, like, okay, how many people in a wheelchair can we even get in here at one time? Because yes, a facility might meet ADA code, but that’s going to be it. With Lakeshore, that wasn’t even a thought because it’s so accessible and so well-run. And the staff are so used to having disabled athletes. So that part was great. The facility’s tremendous. It’s plenty big enough. There was space for everything we needed. And then with all the dorm housing, the national team was actually able to stay in the dorms, and the referees and game staff were also able to stay on site, which is massive because that’s sometimes a 20-minute bus ride each direction in the morning and at night that they’ve got to do. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Just having it right there where all somebody had to do was walk out their door and walk a couple hundred feet and they were in the gym. That was really, really cool. So, Lakeshore staff, Boccia United States staff, and USA Boccia, everybody worked really well together. And I think one of the reasons that we had such a large number of athletes was because so many people wanted to see it. They’ve heard about it, but they wanted to see it because they know this is where the national team trains. And then the other really cool side note is we’ve got one heck of a local boccia team started at Lakeshore. And I think one of the big reasons for that was because they knew they were hosting nationals. I mean, I can’t remember how many athletes they had competing. I think it was nine or 10; a lot for one individual team.
Patrick Parkes: 19:48
Yeah, I think I would just add to what Nick said. I think what was really exciting for me to see, you know, Nick mentioned a little bit about the new athletes that came to nationals. So, with that, we classified a whole group of new athletes who will continue playing the sport. We’re very excited to continue. And we even had some newer athletes medal or even be in medal contention as well. So, to be able to see some of those new faces that have just started the sport within the last year and being able to have success at the high level, connecting with our regional tournaments, and then plugging into our national tournament, that was really amazing. I think the national tournament was the culmination, but it really speaks to that people are excited about the sport, that they’re excited about what USA Boccia and Boccia United States together have to offer. And so, I think it was a great cap to months of planning, but overall, just a great week, and really speaks to all the effort that was put in. And that will carry forward with some good momentum.
Host: 20:50
Patrick provided some information about playing boccia in your local area.
Patrick Parkes: 20:54
I think what I would add to it, if we didn’t already, is just again how inclusive the sport can be. We want to work with you, whether it’s with a team or a club, or an athlete, individually. Another avenue that we would love to build out further, and are always looking to partner with, is schools. Because it’s such an inclusive sport that can be played by both students with disabilities, athletes with disabilities, and also their able-bodied peers. We’ve seen that take root in a lot of other countries globally within inclusive education programs, physical education programs. And so, I think a goal for us as USA Boccia would be, as we said, connecting directly with individuals and clubs through our organization, but also, as Nick said, connecting maybe with those rehab centers and different physical therapy clinics, OT clinics, rec therapy clinics, but then also lastly, schools as well, too, as another avenue.
Host: 21:59
Patrick and Nick gave some advice for aspiring athletes.
Patrick Parkes: 22:03
In terms, I think as we’ve touched on, boccia being a target-based precision sport, practice is the key. There are countless hours and dedication to honing your craft, getting better and honing your strategy individually is one piece of it. But then also, I think another piece of advice I would have is to watch the international games. So, there’s a lot on YouTube in terms of what other athletes, what other countries are doing, learning from different strategies, because as we’ve seen, both of us have seen at international tournaments, there can be some different ways that the game is played that we might not always see in the U.S. as well. So, I think just kind of in sum, absorbing the game as much as you can, whether it’s individually by practicing by yourself, within your teams and clubs, or practicing doing drills. Using it as kind of a camaraderie element where you guys can get together and play boccia, but also monitor the game all over, just to see what you can find that’s out there, by watching how the game is played. A lot of the international tournaments and some national tournaments in different countries are live-streamed. And so that’s always available as a resource.
Nick Taylor: 23:25
My avenue to the sport of boccia was a little bit different in that I came from wheelchair tennis. I played wheelchair tennis for a total of 25 years before I started playing boccia. So, number one, I was a commencement speaker at one time, and I used this quote, which I used to say was from Winston Churchill, but then some scholarly folks, maybe Patrick, have corrected me and said that this did not necessarily come from Winston Churchill. So, I don’t know who it came from—not me, I’m not plagiarizing here. But it said that success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. I mean, that’s literally my life in summary. You could summarize my 45 years of being on earth with that. You have to be willing to try. When I give speeches, I don’t care if it’s tennis or a math problem or playing the sport of boccia; you have to be willing to try. You have to realize that you probably are not going to be good right when you first start. And my thing is always that if it’s really worth achieving, you’re not going to be good at it right off the bat. And you could put that towards the sport of boccia as a whole, or once you get into it, a specific skill. I’ve been in this for seven years now, and I’m still constantly learning brand new skills. Now, coming from tennis, when I first started it, I was like, “Okay, well, I don’t know anything about this sport, and I need to learn.” So, I went on Amazon and I started typing boccia books. Guess what? There are none. They don’t exist (that I’m aware of or that I could find). So, you have to do exactly what Patrick talked about. Number one, it’s hours and hours of practice. And then it’s also watching videos. Because that’s the best way to learn. Because you’re going to have to watch the video and try to figure out what the top players in the world are doing strategically. Then you’ve got to be able to break it down and figure out why they did do that. Sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t because sometimes they may have, as good as they are, they may have meant to do something else and then got lucky and something different happened, but it was good. But that is the way within the sport of boccia specifically. And then if you are fortunate enough to be in an area where there are at least local coaches or even athletes who know the sport, that is going to be massive as well because they can speed that learning curve up tremendously.
Patrick Parkes: 25:57
I think I would just add one more thing as well. I think we touched on this a little bit with talking about the incredibly inclusive nature of boccia being the most inclusive sport on the Paralympic roster, but I think Nick and my stories both speak to that. Speaking for myself, being someone with cerebral palsy who has never really found success in another wheelchair sport. And then going to Nick’s side of the equation, where he is a multi-time Paralympian in the sport of tennis and found our sport of boccia to continue his sporting career. And so, I think it’s really cool, just as I’m even thinking about it now and sharing it, that our sport can serve so many different types of athletes. So, when we say this, it’s not meant to be intimidating that there’s this major height that you have to reach or everything that goes into that. There is, but the key is just having the courage to start. Whether it’s plugging into that local team or other local athletes that might be in your area or being a brand-new athlete in your area and trying to build something. It’s all about having the courage to really get engaged and do whatever aligns with your goals to get you where you want to go within the sport. It can accommodate a variety of different athletes and different goals as well, too. We have athletes who are striving to compete on the national team and international competitions, and ultimately the Paralympics. And we have athletes who enjoy the sport and have played recreationally for a number of years, too. So, I think on all sides, whether it’s the types of athletes or the types of engagement you want, boccia can provide that.
Host: 27:45
We asked Patrick and Nick about their health and wellness tips for boccia athletes.
Patrick Parkes: 27:51
So, I think specifically for me, especially as a boccia athlete with cerebral palsy, spasticity and muscle tightness is huge for us. And so that’s something that we all deal with to varying degrees in our daily lives as well. But certainly, it affects how we perform in sports. So, I think very key for us is trying to maintain that flexibility as much as we can, knowing that we will have that muscle tightness, and how do we manage that? And that can come in a variety of forms, whether it’s stretching, breathing, or making sure that we’re taking that time mentally to reset. Because boccia is a very mentally intense game that can then manifest itself in physical tightness, too. And so, there’s that piece of it. And then I would also say, I foreshadowed it a little bit with the mental side, but I would also say, similar to golf, it’s a very mentally dominant sport. How do you visualize success? How do you visualize your strategy working? And with those visualizations, they can naturally lead to you being calmer and more successful on court. How does that feed into your overall success? So, I would say for us, as much as movement (flexibility) plays a part in it, it’s not [as important] as we’ve talked about, because the sport can accommodate a variety of different strategies. It’s not like other sports where you’re reaching a strength milestone or a distance milestone. It’s much more about how you condition yourself to meet your own goals and kind of comport with your own strategy. So, I always like to compare it to golf in that way [that] the sport can accommodate a lot of different styles of play. It’s a matter of how you set yourself up for success.
Nick Taylor: 29:53
Yeah, I would agree with everything Patrick said. I think that for our athletes, it’s so individualized because of the nature of their disabilities and the differences in disabilities. I mean, just cerebral palsy alone. I mean, how different it can be. How much it can affect one person here and another person in a different way. Something like arthrogryposis is massively wide-ranging. I think it’s individual. It’s not necessarily about strength. I mean, for like the ramp players, it’s really not about strength at all. And then for others, it’s less. I think, for example, in my division, in the BC4 division, in general, a lot of the folks with muscular dystrophy can actually throw the ball harder and further in the air than someone with arthrogryposis can. There are a couple with arthrogryposis that can really chuck it out there, but the majority are more like me, who can’t get it as far. And the reason for that is if you actually had us do a strength test, we would probably be a little bit stronger than someone with muscular dystrophy. But with muscular dystrophy, while they may not have the strength, they have a massive range of motion because their arm is looser because of their disability. And so, they can pendulum back and forth and then ultimately create way more power than I can, let’s say. So why I bring that up is, like Patrick said, it’s not just necessarily about strength. It’s in the CP and ones and twos with the folks with CP. I have learned so much about cerebral palsy and athletes with cerebral palsy. For most athletes, you hear the phrase, “oh, he got tight,” or “oh, she got tight when it mattered,” which is true for an athlete with CP. It’s exponentially more important because if they get tight because of their disability, how tight they are to start with, it can literally be almost where they can’t move if they get too nervous. So that’s where what Patrick was talking about, the mental side of the sport, is so massive. I mean, it is so important because once you get to a certain level, everybody can throw the ball. Everybody can do basically the same shots. It’s making the right decisions, and then it is staying loose enough to be able to execute and make it two millimeters to the left of the jack as opposed to two millimeters to the right, which would be losing, if that makes any sense.
Host: 32:35
Here are their final thoughts.
Nick Taylor: 32:38
The one thing with boccia is that you need to have a flat area. A flat, hard area, and you need to have boccia balls. Beyond that, you don’t have to have a specialized tennis court or a basketball court. It’s not like tennis. I keep going to tennis because that’s what I play. You don’t have to have someone to practice with. I practice every day by myself. Now, granted, with the nature of the disability, folks may need help picking a ball up, but I’m saying you don’t need another individual with a disability to practice against or a whole team to be able to practice with. As long as you have a flat area, you can mark out a court to at least be able to practice on, even if you don’t officially tape it down. I know when I first started, I was still playing tennis at the same time. And I was, I’ve played on every surface under the sun because I was playing in hotel ballrooms, hotel lobbies, stuff like that, that I would play at when I was at tennis tournaments, because I was already gone so much to tennis. I had to practice while I was at a tennis tournament. And when I first started, I was really worried about making sure I got the court marked out exactly right. Well, that was silly. You didn’t need to, as long as you’re staying within the bounds of the overall size of the court. If you’re throwing the ball, you’re throwing the ball. And the other thing going back to, in terms of learning the sport, I think I’ve learned a tremendous amount, strategy-wise, of practicing where I just play both colors. I play red, then I move over, and I throw from blue. Then, I go back and forth, and so strategically it helps me think differently. The one really good thing is that when I started playing here in Wichita, there was no one else really that played. I’ve now got a few that are playing, but there was nobody for me to practice with. But I was still able to do it. That’s a really cool additional thing when you’re first trying to start out with the sport, is that you can do that.
Patrick Parkes: 34:35
And I guess I would add, I think one of the exciting things that we’ve seen, and we hope that this is definitely the case even more so in the lead up to L.A. and having a home games in 2028, is that a lot of folks may have never seen the sport of boccia before and happened to turn on coverage of the Paris Paralympics and started to look at the sport and started to say, “Hey, that’s somebody with a disability who looks to have the same disability that I do. And this looks like fun. I’d love to get involved.” And so we’ve had a lot of folks contact us simply from having seen the sport and wanting to get plugged in. And so, I think that’s a testament to, again, not only the sport itself and the accessibility of it, but also, I’ll just add a plug for increased coverage of adaptive sports and wheelchair sports. Just helping to build that awareness. And so, we’re definitely appreciative of you all as well too, and the role that you guys play in trying to bring light and awareness to adaptive sports topics, because I think the awareness is super crucial.
Host: 35:47
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