TBE's Zach Mason selected for Team USA Symposium in Colorado Springs

Last week, The Basketball Embassy’s director of communications, Zach Mason, was selected by the University of the Incarnate Word as the only graduate student to go on a school-sponsored trip to the Team USA Symposium at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO.

The three-and-a-half-day event offered attendees the opportunity to learn more about the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and the various national governing bodies (NGBs) involved in international competition.

“It was truly an enlightening experience,” Mason said. “In addition to gaining insight on the operations behind the world’s biggest international sporting event, I also learned a great deal about the progression of inclusive movements toward adaptive sport, which was something I’ve been wanting to get more involved in for a long time.”

Attendees were given the opportunity to experience adaptive sport firsthand by participating in sitting volleyball matches and wheelchair basketball games, which are both Paralympic events. The group of roughly 150 students also heard from Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls and legends alike on their journeys to becoming the nation’s highest-caliber athletes.

“Our priority at The Basketball Embassy is to grow community and empower youth and emerging leaders through the game,” Mason said. “This experience at the Team USA Symposium showed me a variety of ways the USOPC is doing similar work, and it gave me a fresh perspective on different ways we can continue to live out our mission both domestically and globally.”