The first time Sam Sturkey (ʼ25) rolled her wheelchair onto a basketball court, she was only five years old. Within an hour, young Sam was certain wheelchair basketball was not for her.
“I told my mom, ‘Please don’t bring me back here!’” Sturkey recalled.
A year later, with all the wisdom of age six and a newly fitted wheelchair, Sturkey gave basketball another shot. This time, she found a passion that would sustain her through childhood and beyond. Sturkey, who was born with the spinal condition spina bifida, spent the next 13 years playing for Katie’s Komets, a Philadelphia-based co-ed wheelchair basketball team for youth with walking disabilities.
Now an ebullient presence on campus in her sophomore year studying Psychology, Sturkey smiled as she greeted athletes arriving for Cabrini’s second annual wheelchair basketball game inside Dixon Center on Monday, April 17.
Cavalier student athletes, seated in wheelchairs provided by Katie’s Komets, took to the hardwood to face the Komets. Just before tip-off, Cabrini Women’s Basketball Head Coach Kate Pearson asked the question on everyone’s mind: which team would Sturkey play for—her former team the Komets or the Cabrini squad?
Sturkey, who serves as Women’s Basketball team manager, joined her Cabrini teammates.
View the full photo gallery from the game
“It actually means the world to me just because of how much the girls show support for me and have my back,” Sturkey said.
Try as she may to deflect the spotlight, it was clear from the crowd’s excitement every time Sturkey got the ball that she was the star of the night.
Her mother, Nicole DiPadova, said she was not surprised to see Sam bringing so many people together.
“I had no doubt she was going to [get involved],” DiPadova said. “She’s hitting every one of her milestones that she wants to get to. She nails it.
“A lot of it has to do with here—this place was a Godsend,” she said of Cabrini.
In addition to her impact in Athletics, Sturkey serves as Vice President of the Exceptional Children’s Club, a special needs advocacy club on campus; as a Cabrini Next Steps mentor, guiding a freshman through their first year on campus; and as a Student Ambassador in the Admissions office, touring with families visiting Cabrini.
“She does a lot for the University,” Coach Pearson said. “From the accessibility standpoint, she’s an advocate. And, she just amazes me with her spirit.”
Sturkey chose to attend Cabrini largely due to its accessible campus, particularly the two-story ramp that connects Founder’s Hall and Widener Campus Center.
“I am terrified of elevators,” she said with a laugh. “So, just having that accessibility of being able to go from one floor to another and not have to take an elevator, and having that freedom of having another way to get around, is kind of what sold me to come here.”
Sturkey wants to use her Psychology degree to help children with disabilities as a child life specialist, but her involvement in sports has put her on “the cusp” of sports psychology, she said. She plans to integrate the two passions in her career after graduation.
“I just want to break those barriers between those who have a disability and those who don’t have a disability,” she said.
That was the idea behind the wheelchair basketball game, which ended with the Komets easily defeating the Cabrini student athletes by more than 20 points.
“Doing something like this I think opens people’s eyes to the idea that we’re all athletes, we just do it in a different way,” she said.