From her and her brother Evan knocking over lamps while playing soccer when they were younger to finding her way onto one of the nation’s premier wheelchair basketball programs, one constant remains with senior Hannah Smith.

“When I’m looking at achieving my goals, my disability has nothing to do with it,” she said. “I would be doing the things I’m doing whether or not it made a difference.”

Smith, the recipient of the Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award at the 2024 ESPY Awards over the summer, received the nomination for her work with Sportable, a program designed to help those with physical disabilities and visual impairments through sports, in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Born with a condition affecting her spine, she grew up seeing few people in her life with similar living circumstances. Once arriving at Whitewater, however, she saw a world similar to the one she continues to build back home.

“Being here at Whitewater and having basketball coaches who have my exact same diagnosis but are older than me and have those life experiences…it’s most important for the people with disabilities to see other people they can relate to being successful and achieving their goals,” Smith said. “I think that has inspired me to be that person to the next generation.”

While Smith no longer participates on the active women’s wheelchair basketball team in Whitewater, she grew up playing the sport and is still involved in it to this day. Ultimately, it was not just the sport that was a driving reason in making her decision to come to UW-Whitewater. 

“I went to different training camps in high school, and when I came here, it felt different,” Smith said. “It felt like a family from the minute I first arrived on campus for summer camps.”

Although a handful of Division I programs offer wheelchair basketball teams, Whitewater’s display of love and appreciation for their team stood out to Smith when she visited. 

“When I was an upperclassman (in high school), my mom booked my flight wrong, so I came a day early,” Smith said. “Christina Schwab (Whitewater’s women’s wheelchair basketball coach at the time) let me stay at her place overnight… Opie (former UW-Whitewater men’s head wheelchair basketball coach Jeremy Lade) took me out to lunch at China House down the road. They had a wheelchair basketball poster put up in their window.”

Outside of the community, the same care and affection extends into the classroom.

“Every time I start a new class here, the teacher knows my name. They know things about me,” Smith said. “They ask me how my Thanksgiving was (going to visit my family), because they know about me, they care about you, and they’re invested in your success.”

With the same care that Smith has received in her time at Whitewater, she continues to deliver that same passion with the kids she has worked with back home through Sportable.

“There is something for everybody and that is really important in my story,” Smith said. “These kids want opportunities to grow in their sport, just like any other kids…the great thing is that it’s growing. Awareness is growing and support is growing.”

To help spread the awareness, Smith helped create the “See It, Be It” project, a social media campaign helping to show kids a better representation of those with physical disabilities in their lives.

“I was having conversations with athlete’s parents and them expressing to me that their kids don’t see themselves represented in social media, in the news, and really in leadership roles of any kind,” Smith said. “The heart of the ‘See It, Be It’ project is to take the voices of these people with disabilities who are already doing these things and just put them in front of this audience of kids with disabilities.”

Above all else, Smith stresses she does what she does to advocate for those who have experienced life as similar as she has.

“What I do is because people with disabilities have human rights. We’re human and we have the rights to the same opportunities,” Smith said. “I look at it as, ‘These people are the future and these people have a right to these services and opportunities.’ Anything I can do to contribute to that, that’s what I’m going to do.”