Photo courtesy of Washington County Riverboat Foundation social media

Countless individuals, organizations, and city representatives flocked to the Riverside Casino and Golf Resort last week to find out if they were awarded grants from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation. One lucky group was Adaptive Sports Iowa, which received $24,100.

Jayden Stafford, a student-athlete at Mid-Prairie explained Adaptive Sports Iowa to KCII. “Basically, its an organization that gives disabled athletes such as myself the opportunity to get to compete in sports that we are passionate about and want to pursue in life.”

The grant money is going towards adaptive sports equipment for Iowa athletes including track racers, shot-put chairs, and basketball chairs. Stafford went on to add what opportunities like this mean to him and the organization. “It’s gonna help all these young kids that are coming up that maybe don’t know what they wanna do yet or they don’t know what sport they would like to play. It’s just giving them the opportunity to figure out what they wanna do, and if they get serious about it this is their step.

The Washington County Riverboat Foundation is the nonprofit license holder for the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort, which provides the entirety of its funding. For the Fall 2023 grant cycle, WCRF awarded 26 grants totaling $2,155,946.