by Shelley Ginsburg-Brown
The theme for National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) 2021, “America’s Recovery: Powered by Inclusion,” reflects the importance of ensuring that people with disabilities have full access to employment during the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, but sports reporter Maria Serrao knows that, for a candidate in a wheelchair, securing employment has been a struggle since well before the pandemic began.
Reflecting on the job interviews she experienced prior to her current job reporting on sports for RPVtv (airing on Cox and Verizon cable channels), Maria recalled how difficult it was to move past the skepticism and doubts that hiring managers expressed about her ability to do her job, and to become America’s only female sports reporter covering sports from a wheelchair
“I’ve literally had news directors say to me, ‘I don’t get how you do your job and I’m scared to hire you.’ They flew me into the city because they could see I was able to do everything, but they’re like ‘I just don’t know.’ Their lack of knowledge is the problem.”
Fortunately, solving problems is something that runs in Maria’s family.
A car accident at age five resulted in her being partially paralyzed, but her family did not let the accident derail her future. Her dad had her exercising and swimming daily after she returned home from the hospital.
Maria was not enthusiastic about her daily regimen, until she became inspired watching the Dallas Cowboys training under the hot California sun near her home. She and her three older brothers were very into sports and she realized that if the Cowboys could do that, she could endure a hard daily workout too.
“From the get-go it was go, go, go,” said Maria. “My parents were like ‘you’re going to do everything everyone else does.’ I was the only kid in my school who used a wheelchair or braces, but I didn’t really think about it because I was doing everything I wanted to do.”
After finishing school, Maria continued doing everything she wanted to do, but still faced skepticism and uncertainty.
She landed prime-time television acting roles after news coverage of her as the first woman in a wheelchair to compete in a Miss California Beauty Pageant at age 19, but scripts mostly showed a disabled person as sick or dying, and casting directors would often say, “you don’t look disabled” or “people in wheelchairs can’t be actors.”
“We’re not much further now,” Maria remarked. “It hasn’t changed a lot. You keep hoping when you see little steps you hope, but it is still such a small number.”
Working with a trainer on adaptive exercises that could be done sitting down led her to create her own cable show and videos for those with limited mobility. The videos featured professional athletes, whom she personally recruited, sharing their stories of recovery from sports injuries. She then began to tour the county as the National Spokeswoman for a brand of fitness equipment. All this after a doctor had expressed doubts that someone sitting down in a wheelchair could be active enough to achieve a healthy weight.
Her turn to sports reporting came after receiving an invitation to tape a sports segment with the then-San Diego Chargers.
“I really didn’t have any intention of being a journalist or a news person or a sports host but it turned out to be the perfect fit, and once I started doing it I loved it, it just was the greatest gift ever.”
She adds, “In sports there isn’t one athlete who has felt strange around me or unsupportive, it’s always been like a kinship. It’s the bosses upstairs who are scared of things that they don’t even understand.
I think we’re at a societal place where you can’t use your own fear as an excuse for why you don’t talk to someone with a disability and say ‘you are really good at your job.’
During the pandemic, we learned that inclusion has to mean everyone. Inclusion is not just the color of your skin, it’s any differences you might have.
When it comes to disability, it’s just as important as any of the other protected classes or other areas and it’s strange that it isn’t always included in the disability conversations.”
Easterseals mission to change the way disability is viewed resonates with Maria. To do this day she is still surprised at the limited view many people have of a person with a disability. “In news, we learn that sensitivity goes out the window, but the perception is just so strange. People say to me you drive your own car, you live by yourself, you have a boyfriend? What do they expect? Where do they get that impression? They don’t see it on TV. It’s so backward from so long ago now, it just seems strange.”
By doing her job well Maria has shown disability is no barrier to success. “So when you can break-through and you can actually get to a point, where, for me it’s being on the field with the L.A. Rams and being in the locker room with the Dodgers and with the Lakers and whomever else, it’s the people around who have to say, it’s really not a big deal. It’s another person who the other people can see and say, ‘OK, they are successful doing what they love.’”
Check out Maria’s work at PlayingTheFieldTV.com.
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