On Friday 4 July from 10am – 12pm at MainPower Stadium, a selection of adaptive sports will be available for those with a disability, impairment or who are just interested in trying something new.

People can experience wheelchair basketball, boccia, top team competitions, loose parts play and adaptive Revl GT (which is a style of high intensity group training).

Leading the event is young para-athlete Zack Lappin who lives with right-side Hemiplegia, which is a type of Cerebral Palsy. Zack not only competes internationally in discus and javelin but is co-Chair of the Waimakariri Youth Council.

Zack pitched the idea to Council’s community team in 2023 after noticing a need for it in North Canterbury.

“There hadn’t been a space for it, and there was often a difficulty for people to get into Christchurch where a lot of the adaptive sports are," Zack says.

“We wanted to set up a local space for the festival, so that if people were interested in getting more involved, they could easily connect with the groups running these sports in North Canterbury."

Supporting Zack with the festival is local Paralympian Evan Clulee, who made his Paralympic debut at Barcelona in 1992 in wheelchair racing.

Evan will be helping with the wheelchair basketball, which is also run at MainPower Stadium on Tuesday evenings.

Aside from being an opportunity for people to have a go at a new sport, Zack hopes the North Canterbury Inclusive Sports Festival is a chance to bring more light to adaptive sports in general.

“We’d love to see everybody there. It’s about getting used to and understanding para-sports which are often not seen in the community.”

Zack says the North Canterbury Inclusive Sports Festival caters for everybody, not just those with a disability. “That’s the whole point of it being inclusive.”

This will be the third North Canterbury Inclusive Sports Festival organised collaboratively between Waimakariri District Council, Waimakariri Youth Council, the Halberg Foundation, the North Canterbury Sport and Recreation Trust, and the Waimakariri Access Group.

Entry is free and registration is not required.

(from left) Zack Lappin, Evan Clulee, and Council Community Development Facilitator Martin Pugh.