As the associate director of Adaptive Sports and Fitness at the University of Michigan, Erik Robeznieks (BSc ’19) champions sport equity and provides those with disabilities an equal opportunity to participate in sports. His career in adaptive sport can be traced back to his time as a kinesiology student at York.
“I knew I wanted to work in sport,” says Erik. “Kinesiology offered so many different angles to pursue that. By the end of my time at York, I had a wealth of experience and a lens to so many different angles of what sport could provide.”
What drew Erik to his current path was the positive social change that he could create. By using his lifelong passion for sport, he could help improve the lives of others.
“What really stuck with me the most was the power of sport as a social platform,” says Erik. “Sports have a profound and transformative ability to change people’s lives, whether it’s health outcomes, self-perception, or interpersonal skills.”
Erik’s first-hand introduction into the world of parasport started when he began working at Wheelchair Basketball Canada and gained a deep understanding into the lives of the participating athletes.
“There were so many great athletes who were being recruited to schools in the United States to play collegiate wheelchair basketball,” says Erik. “However, what I discovered was that so many of these student-athletes were not being afforded the same access, opportunity, and financial support. I looked at this problem and looked at different policies and frameworks to create an ecosystem that allowed people with disabilities to pursue sport to the highest degree possible.”
While working towards his MBA at Toronto Metropolitan University, he wrote his thesis on the topic of adaptive sport and integration. Through his MBA, he gained an idea of how to apply what he learned at York.
“Through York, I had all the ingredients of understanding international development and sport performance,” says Erik. “The MBA gave me the toolkit to apply what I learned from my Kinesiology degree and ultimately led me to do my master’s thesis on the topic of inclusion and integration of adaptive sport within the NCAA. I credit a lot of that foundational knowledge to York, where I took theories and concepts about long-term athlete development models and grassroots programming to use as a foundation for this important research.”
In 2020, Dr. Okanlami at the University of Michigan hired Erik to help build its adaptive sport program. He used what he learned from working in the parasport industry, building the program from the ground up into one of the most robust university-based adaptive sport programs in the United States. One of the program's big initiatives he has helped create and lead is the Adaptive Sports and Inclusive Recreation Initiative for students from kindergarten to grade 12, which introduces adaptive sport programming – including wheelchair basketball, sitting volleyball, and goalball – that can include students with disabilities.
“When you introduce adaptive sports into the general education curriculum, it changes the entire social environment. Now kids don’t see disability as inability, they see it as a different way of moving around,” says Erik. “We also introduced the equipment loan program to address the obstacles that high cost and access to equipment can be for students looking to get into adaptive sports.”
Erik’s impact in growing adaptive sport has also extended across the globe as a global sports mentor, using parasport as a platform for international relations.
“I’ve started building a close relationship with the US Department of State, which gets back to my original motives of using sport as a tool for diplomacy and working with people around the world,” says Erik. “To take the best practices of what we’ve learned at the University of Michigan, then implement those strategies in other countries and see the growth we’ve helped create is extremely profound.”
Erik hopes to continue to help break down barriers and make sport more accessible, using the power of sport to connect people.
Erik Robeznieks is a recipient of 첥Ƶ’s 2026 Top 30 Alumni Under 30 which recognizes inspiring and diverse alumni 29 years old and younger who are driven to make a difference locally and globally.