Miss Wheelchair America Rallies For Good

Hilary Muehlberger finds a bit of spare time between her frequent trips across the country to meet up in a quaint coffee shop near her hometown of Greenwood, Mo., and share her story as a professional wheelchair tennis player and the reigning Miss Wheelchair America.

Nationwide trips are now a commonality in Muehlberger’s life as her passionate advocacy for the growth of adaptive sports along with her own tennis career has become relentless. So relentless, in fact, that her whole platform as Miss Wheelchair America 2020 is “Achieving Independence through Adaptive Sports.” She currently holds a United States Tennis Association (USTA) national ranking in both singles and doubles wheelchair tennis.

Muehlberger wasn’t always living this full life as a strong advocate for disability awareness and professional wheelchair tennis player, though. In fact, she herself didn’t think much about the disability community at all until September 11, 2015, when she was in a car accident that would change her life as she knew it. 

That night she and a friend hopped in a car to leave a social event where the two had been imbibing. The driver crashed into a house going 50 miles per hour, leaving Muehlberger with two broken legs and broken ribs, a broken tailbone, punctured lung, and a T12 spinal cord injury. 

After spending a few weeks in the hospital, a few months rehabbing, and a few more months learning how to live life independently in her new wheelchair, Muehlberger’s world opened up to the opportunities within the disability community.

She first dove in to her activism by speaking with high school students about the dangers of drunk driving, but soon became drained by so often having to talk about herself as if she were broken or damaged. 

“I got so tired and worn down from talking about myself as this cautionary tale, like this is the worst it can get,” she said. “My world has only gotten bigger because of my disability. Before, I was only thinking about myself. My world was so small.”

A natural competitor, Muehlburger turned to sports as an alternative way to find opportunity, growth, and independence while fueling her competitive edge. Muehlberger was a soccer player previous to her accident, and sought out a more accessible sport she could excel in.

She got connected with The Whole Person, an organization that provides opportunities for those with disabilities, who in turn suited Muehlberger up with a sports chair and introduced her to tennis through their KC No Coast tennis program. Though she had never played a racquet sport before, it was love at first serve for her. 

She credits her tennis teammates for being a large reason she stuck with the sport, as they not only taught her how to excel in adaptive sports but also offered a whole new stockpile of advice and resources for living with an injury like hers. 

“I think there’s so much to be said about adaptive sports,” Muehlberger added. “The community, and the full wellness of body, mind, soul—the whole thing.”

Muehlberger shares that her teammates and coaches have impacted her life and her athletic career far more than meets the eye. Being brand new to the sport just two years ago, her teammates who’ve played for far longer have worked with her to dial in her serve, efficiently move in her chair with the racquet, and play to her strengths. 

Her hard work and support from her team has yielded impressive results. Despite first picking up a racquet only two years ago, Muehlberger competes professionally in regional competitions with KC No Coast and is currently ranked by USTA and USTA Missouri Valley in both singles and doubles.

At the Wheel It Forward tournament in Kansas City this past April, she placed first in women’s singles and second in doubles. At the USTA US Open Wheelchair Championships in St. Louis this September, she placed third in both the Women’s A doubles and Men’s C doubles divisions, along with competing in the Men’s C singles division. 

“That was my favorite thing about the Open, seeing how everyone plays differently, watching and learning,” added Muehlberger. “I was like ‘How did you think of that?’ It was really, really cool to see those players. Those are players I was watching videos of when I first started playing.” 

In the middle of her meteoric rise in the tennis rankings, Muehlberger unintentionally stumbled into what would be the perfect platform for a Miss Wheelchair America campaign she did not yet know she would begin. 

Though originally skeptical of competing in wheelchair pageants, even laughing at the notion, Muehlberger was swayed to fill out an application to the upcoming Miss Wheelchair Missouri pageant when Karen Roy, Miss Wheelchair America 2019, came into town and convinced her. 

What enticed Muelhlberger to compete in these pageants was that they are judged on advocacy rather than appearance, along with the opportunity to learn from the other competing female wheelchair users who use their platforms in big ways.

“I had zero intention of winning,” she added. “It was just so cool to be around these women. I had never been around that many women in wheelchairs ever.”

Drained from repeatedly speaking about herself as a worst-case scenario when speaking about the dangers of drunk driving to high schoolers, she saw this as an opportunity to create a platform for herself where she could speak on more fulfilling topic like adaptive sports. 

After being crowned Miss Wheelchair Missouri on November 13, 2018, Muehlberger was crowned Miss Wheelchair America on July 6, 2019. Since then, life has been nothing short of a whirlwind for her. 

She had never even flown before, and now travels all over the country to speak at Abilities Expos and schools, advocate for the disability community in front of Congress, and many other opportunities she'd never even dreamed of.

She and her team also visit other adaptive sports programs to offer ideas and discuss how they can grow their reach within their respective local communities. A unique way the team promotes awareness about adaptive sports in schools is by taking over P.E. programs for a day, bringing in sports chairs for able-bodied students to try out. It serves as a hands-on approach that uses sports as a common denominator to show that wheelchair users can participate in society just as much as able-bodied people. 

“It’s a cool opportunity for them to see what wheelchaired people can do,” she reflected.

She’s also done a lot of work locally in her hometown, getting fully accessible tennis courts and an inclusive park in the city of Greenwood, along with supporting the Lee’s Summit North girls’ tennis team.

Her passion for adaptive tennis has unlocked a world of opportunity for her to advocate for the countless number of people who can benefit from adaptive sports. 

Some of these benefits, she shares, are getting people out of their homes, combatting depression, providing community, instilling confidence, preventing further injury, and increasing a person’s likelihood to be employed. 

“There are too many benefits to playing adaptive sports to not do it,” she asserts. 

Despite all that the athlete and advocate has accomplished in just a few years, the future is even brighter. Some of her future goals include growing her tennis career and competing in the Paralympic Games, as she continues to progress her platform with adaptive sports and increase education on inclusivity surrounding the disability community. 

“It’s one thing to invite somebody to the table, it’s another to have an actual engaging conversation with them,” she adds. “That’s the difference between accessible and inclusive.”