Tucked away in the back of a business park in Carlsbad is the Adapt Functional Movement Center – a community hub for people looking to get back into sports or compete in the next paralympics.
On the last Saturday of the month, a group of about 20 community members gathered for a meeting centered on athletes who have experienced spinal cord injuries.
For some of these athletes, like Daniel “DJ” Lombardo, this place is the breeding ground for his revitalized passion for surfing and competing at a professional level.
Lombardo participated in a variety of sports growing up, eventually focusing on motocross and rising to a professional status. But after he suffered a spinal cord injury during a practice that paralyzed him from the chest down, Lombardo had to reimagine his goals. After putting in the work to relearn how to do basic tasks like drive, he focused on school and looked for ways to get active again.
Lombardo, 30, works next door as a mechanical engineer and has been coming to Adapt for years, which is where he embraced sports as a positive outlet and source of community.
“Surfing changed everything,” the Oceanside resident said. “The freedom and independence of surfing, to me, is like just so enlivening. It’s hard to describe … it’s that same feeling that I had with motocross, but now I have it again with surfing.”
The 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris played on a flat-screen TV near the entrance of Adapt. While the rehabilitation center serves as a hub for physical therapy, mental health support and community, it’s also where some athletes trained for the biggest stage in sports.
Two of these athletes in Paris are Noah Hanssen, who is competing in wheelchair fencing and Brandon Lyons, competing in paracycling for Team USA.
Kristee Shepherd, who works as Adapt’s lead of member experience said often times people don’t come into the center with the goal of working toward being a professional athlete. It’s after they encounter other athletes progressing through their program that they get inspired to try something new.
“People come here and they realize that they aren’t confined to a wheelchair and that they can be strong and can be athletes,” Shepherd said. “And definitely seeing (the paralympics) on TV inspires them to think, ‘OK, maybe I can do that too.’”
The Adapt center is a nonprofit organization and one of only a handful in the county that offers a continuum of services to people with multiple sclerosis, neurological conditions or spinal cord injuries.
The services aren’t covered by insurance, so the nonprofit relies on fundraising, grants and members paying out of pocket, Shepherd said.
That’s where outside organizations such as the High Fives Foundation come in, by offering grants to athletes so they can stay active post-injury.
One of those High Fives athletes is Alex Uppenkamp, 23, a student at San Diego State University. Surfing is therapy for Uppenkamp and it motivated him to get back in the water almost exactly a year after his 2019 spinal cord injury.
While it hasn’t been easy, Uppenkamp has put in the mental and physical work to get back to the sports he loves, such as biking and surfing, with support from his friends and family.
“Growing up, I was always super outdoorsy, and sports are such a big part of my life that I didn’t want to lose that,” said Uppenkamp. “Once I kind of had the idea that this might be possible, I latched on to that and took full advantage of opportunities.”
Both Uppenkamp and Lombardo will be among the hundreds of adaptive surfers competing next weekend in the U.S. Open Adaptive Surfing Championships in Oceanside. Lombardo competes in the para waterski division, where he uses a customized board that allows him to surf while seated.
This will be Uppenkamp’s first competition and he’ll compete in the prone assist division, where he will surf by lying on his stomach and elbows, with some assistance nearby to help navigate the waves.
Though these athletes have different personal goals for the upcoming competition, one of their shared aspirations is to see adaptive surfing added to the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. There’s a petition with backing from big names such as Kelly Slater, Jack Johnson and para-surfing world champion Victoria Feige, to make sure surfing is included in future paralympic games.
While the audience never sees the mental and physical work of these top-level athletes, Lombardo said the increased visibility benefits everyone.
“I think it’s amazing what those (paralympians) are showing us – I think that just continues to raise the level of competition and it raises my level of wanting to be better,” he said. “Seeing that on the TV, it makes me inspired and it motivates me to get out there more.”
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