Orlando Perez

No. 5 Orlando Perez (front left) at last year's Games

Orlando Perez, a 32-year-old athlete from Augusta, GA, is competing in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games (Games) for his eighth consecutive year. Perez, who was raised in Puerto Rico, was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army at the age of 19 after an injury caused by a spinal cord tumor. He began competing in the Games in 1999, when Puerto Rico PVA invited him.

Perez remembers, “My first thought was, ‘I don’t want to go play in those old AJ hospital chairs.’ I gave in at a basketball demonstration, and when I saw the magic, the ability of these guys, I got hooked. My disability started to vanish and turn into my ability.”

Perez, who received the Spirit of the Games Award in 2005, which honors the athlete who embody the qualities of a true champion, says he competes for his “wife and kids, to show them that just because Dad is in a wheelchair doesn’t mean he’s any different from anyone else and can’t do his best. These veterans are my family too,” he adds. “That’s my goal: to make an example for my kids and this new generation of newly injured veterans coming back home.

“I…want them to feel like I do, that a wheelchair athlete can be as well-prepared and perform as competitively as an able-bodied athlete.”

Perez participates in track, softball and Alpine skiing, but his forte is basketball, which he says to him is “not a game, it’s life!” He has played for Puerto Rico in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association and represented the commonwealth in basketball in the 1999 Para Pan-American Games in Mexico City and the 2003 Central American Caribbean Wheelchair Games in El Salvador. In Florida, Perez played for the Orlando Magic Wheels and competed in national tournaments. Now, in Georgia, he competes with the local team, the Blazing Bulldogs. Perez is currently trying out for the 2008 Paralympics, where he hopes to compete in the 400- and 800-meter track races, his personal favorites.

This year at the Games, Perez is participating in: