In 1994, after being honorably discharged, Adams was living in her hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, when she was in a car accident caused by a driver who ran a red light. The accident left her a quadriplegic, able to move only her eyes and mouth. “I just kept hearing, ‘You can’t, you won’t’ from the doctors,” she says. “I said, ‘Stop telling me what I can’t do. Tell me what the possibilities are.’ ” With intensive physical therapy, and a resolute will, Adams regained some mobility in her arms and legs, and learned to get around using a wheelchair or scooter, sometimes even a walker.

Her interest in sports was sparked eight years later, when a recreational therapist invited her to the National Veterans Wheelchair Games, suggesting she compete in billiards. “I saw people in sip-and-puff wheelchairs shooting archery, people shooting air rifles using their teeth,” she says. “I was like, Lord have mercy! If they can do all of that? Then I know I can do it.” She began with table tennis, trap shooting, and bowling, eventually competing in 10 different sports.

But it’s pickleball that has truly captured her heart, since she was introduced to it in 2019 at a spinal cord injury camp in Georgia, where she was mentoring newly injured veterans. Now she plays five times a week, with both wheelchair and non-disabled pickleballers. “This game, it allows any and everybody to get in some good cardio, relieve some mental stress, meet some new people, and maybe even live a fuller life because of it,” she says. She shares her love for pickleball as a motivational speaker who talks about the power of adaptive sports, and with other wheelchair users too—she recently organized a pickleball clinic for disabled vets. “I often say my accident didn’t happen to me, it happened for me, because just think about it—I’m playing pickleball, I’m traveling all over the place, talking about having hope,” she says. “If my accident had not happened, I would not be an athlete.”