The Paralympic Winter Games Sochi 2014 was the first Games for snowboarding, and Purdy won the bronze medal in snowboardcross. AAS has also assisted such athletes as Paralympic gold medalist Mike Schultz, Paralympic gold medalist Evan Strong, Paralympic gold medalist Mike Minor and Paralympic medalist Keith Gabel, just to name a few. And there are more men and women working their way up the ranks. 

“Almost everybody has participated in one training or another that we have put together,” Gale said.

AAS helped lead the initiative to get adaptive skateboard into the X Games a few years ago. 

“X Games was really excited about expanding that vertical and program within the organization,” Gale said. 

Getting involved in esports has been much the same as how the organization first started: seeing a need and solving it. During stay-at-home orders earlier this year, Gale said he and many of his athletes started connecting with each other through video games. They all have Oculus game systems — for virtual-reality gaming — at home, and they played each other.

While this was a way to stay in touch with one another, Gale spotted an opportunity for AAS. He reached out to Ujesh Desai, the vice president and general manager of gaming for electronics giant Logitech. Gale met Desai, and it did not take him long to buy into the idea of creating an adaptive esports league. 

“He loved it,” Gale said.

Gale said a team of people, from such groups as Red Bull and Mount Sinai Hospital, have come together to discuss the true potential of an adaptive esports league. Gale said this league would accommodate a range of disabilities, including those who have upper-limb disabilities and visual impairments, and it is set to be unveiled in the near future.

“If it’s a driving game, you could include somebody with a lower-limb disability having to use hand controls or something like that in a race,” Gale said, referencing Logitech’s G Challenge in which gamers from across the world compete in racing games. “Ujesh is absolutely an amazing man, and he has really embraced this concept, made it not only a passion project, but a priority for him.”

He added: “For him, it’s the right thing to do, and it makes sense. It’s important. It’s people like that who shift the industry.”

While Gale focuses on expanding the adaptive esports league he created, it reflects his larger mission of assisting disabled people in Para sports. Gale said the organization has faced financial difficulty through its 15 years of being in business. He said there have been times in which he nor Purdy were paid. 

“Some moments, the only reason that I continue to do what I do was because of the athletes, the participants, and the lives we’ve changed,” Gale said.