Feeling Good, Playing Great

The old adage in sports that “when you feel good, you play good” has never been more true for the Auburn Wheelchair Basketball Team. Thanks to support from 259 members of the Auburn Family who donated to the program on Tiger Giving Day 2024, a brand-new recovery suite has helped propel the team to a current record of 20 wins and just 7 losses—their best season ever.

“Our student-athletes work hard, just like their able-bodied counterparts, so we needed a place where they could get treatment done to bounce back from a tough practice, from games, to keep them healthy and help us compete at the top level,” said Robb Taylor, head of Auburn’s Adaptive Athletics program and head coach of the wheelchair basketball team.

As the head coach of the USA Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball Team, Taylor understands the toll the sport can take on athletes’ bodies. With a schedule that sometimes features four or five games over the course of a single weekend, there’s not a lot of downtime for players to recuperate.

Before Tiger Giving Day, Adaptive Athletics had two Normatec units—dynamic air compression units that offer symmetrical massages—to share between its wheelchair basketball, wheelchair tennis and power soccer teams, limiting how much each athlete could recover.

Through the support of the Auburn Family, a brand-new recovery suite was created inside Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum and outfitted with additional Normatec compression sleeves, massage guns, La-Z-Boy chairs and a protein shake station.

Once a limited resource, the Adaptive Athletics Recovery Suite has become an essential aspect of team life, helping student-athletes bounce back from tough games or practices and compete at a high level. Best of all, much of the suite is portable, allowing the team to travel with the recovery gear and remain focused and sharp on the road.

“They utilize it on a daily basis—we don’t require it anymore because the guys just enjoy going in there and using it,” said Taylor. “Usually at this point in the season there are a lot of bumps and wear-and-tear, and you can see that we’re a whole lot fresher at practice.”

The relief and additional recovery time pays dividends in other ways. Players use the suite as a quiet place to do schoolwork, take Zoom calls or grab a protein shake between workouts and class. Even Taylor will sometimes use the Normatec gear, because “every now and then coach needs some [relief], too.”

Taylor has helped put Auburn on the map for adaptive sports, and with the arrival of power soccer and wheelchair tennis it’s growing even more. Now, as perhaps the only college in the country with a dedicated recovery suite, it’s become a huge advantage to recruiting too.

“They’re getting a better night’s sleep and they’re not having the same sort of aches and pains they normally do at this point in the season,” said Taylor. “We attribute a lot of that to the recovery suite.”

By Derek Herscovici ’14