About the Adaptive Sports Association

The Adaptive Sports Association helps to enrich and transform the lives of people with disabilities through sports. By working with students to overcome physical and cognitive challenges in a supportive environment, ASA helps students to give disability a possibility.

Through sports and recreation, participants meet positive role models, increase socialization skills, improve body image and combat depression. Personalities blossom and self-esteem soars as our students challenge themselves physically and emotionally and experience success.

Through the use of state-of-the-art equipment, ASA is able to offer its services to individuals with every type of disability. Over 50 ASA ski and snowboard instructors are nationally certified through Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) and the American Association of Snowboard Instructors (AASI). ASA is also a member of Disabled Sports USA. Quality instruction and safety are primary concerns of ASA.

The Adaptive Sports Association (ASA) was founded in 1983 by Dave Spencer, a young man who had lost a leg to cancer. Dave was a ski instructor and irrepressible visionary who believed that skiing could challenge and increase the self-esteem of all individuals with disabilities. Although Dave lost his battle with cancer in 1986, his dream of an organization dedicated to teaching people with disabilities to ski has continued to thrive and expand. ASA's winter home at Durango Mountain Resort is called the Dave Spencer Center.

The organization was originally called Durango/Purgatory Handicapped Sports Association. The name has changed but the original goal of providing ski instruction to individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities in an environment that diminishes social and economic barriers holds true today.