CUNY student Anesia Glascoe leads the U.S. women in the 2025 Summer World University
Games.
Credit: Wheelchair Sports Federation
The 2025 Summer World University Games were expanded to include wheelchair basketball – a first for the world’s para-athletes and an opportunity for members of CUNY’s trailblazing inclusive and adaptive sports program to represent the U.S. in what is considered the Olympics of college athletics.
During the games in Rhine-Ruhr, Germany, this month, CUNY student Anesia Glascoe played for the U.S. women’s team while the head of CUNY’s adaptive sports program, Ryan Martin, coached the U.S. men’s team. Both teams brought home bronze medals.
For CUNY, representing the U.S. on this world stage is a proud achievement and a powerful example of the growth of our inclusive and adaptive sports program since its inception in 2017.
An Inspiring Exemplar
Few athletes are more inspiring than Anesia Glascoe. In 2021, she was a 20-year-old community college student in Maryland who aspired to a career in social work and was a standout on her school’s basketball team. One night that year, she was the victim of a random shooting that left her paralyzed from the waist down. “In the hospital, when I couldn’t feel anything, the first thing I thought was, ‘What am I going to do without basketball?’ she recalled. “It was my life.”
Determination and months of intensive rehabilitation restored some of her mobility, enough for her to walk short distances with a brace. And then her rehab therapist suggested she try wheelchair basketball. The first time she played, it brought her to tears: “I went from being a college basketball player, confident on the court, to, ‘How do I move the chair? How do I shoot the ball? I can’t do this.’”
But she stuck with it, adapted her skills and became a star player on the rehab hospital’s traveling team. When Ryan Martin heard about Glascoe in 2022, he reached out to her and encouraged her to consider going back to school – at CUNY.
Last summer, she decided to make the move to play under Martin, a leading national advocate for adaptive sports and a top wheelchair basketball player himself. Glascoe enrolled at Queensborough Community College as a liberal arts major with plans to resume her pursuit of a social work degree. She has excelled academically and was the top scorer on CUNY’s women’s wheelchair team this year.
In the World University Games, she fell from her chair and bruised her shoulder after colliding with an opposing player but bounced back to lead the American team in points and rebounds for the tournament, which concluded on July 20.
“Anesia’s a fiery competitor and a natural leader for others,” Martin said. “She’s used the opportunity of the CUNY adaptive sports program to continue her education and rebuild her life.”
Her story exemplifies CUNY’s commitment to our students with disabilities, and it’s a powerful example of how the University’s broad mission of inclusive opportunity can be life-changing for all our students.
This month, as we mark the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, we celebrate how far the world has come in giving equal access, opportunity and support for students with disabilities, including nearly 10,000 who attend CUNY campuses.
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the United States.
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