Sergeant First Class Steven M. Coleman returned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord recently after spending two weeks in Colorado Springs, Colo., for the 2011 Warrior Games.

More than 220 athletes, including almost 80 from the Army, came from all over the United States and the world to compete in the games, a competition for servicemembers and veterans with varying degrees of disabilities and injuries.

Events include various individual and team sports including basketball, swimming, seated volleyball, marksmanship and archery, said U.S. Army Warrior Transition Command Public Affairs Officer, Erich Langer.

Coleman, who is assigned to the 80th Ordnance Battalion, 593rd Sustainment Brigade, was selected to be an archery coach for the games after participating in archery for more than 20 years - the last six years as an instructor.

Leading up to the games, Coleman met several of the athletes and began training them, coaching 16 Soldiers, some from as far away as Germany, with injuries ranging from traumatic brain injury to double-leg amputation.

"I've seen people shoot who were legally blind, amputees, double amputees, all kinds of people," Coleman said.

"They get these injuries that they will have for the rest of their lives. And they need to adapt; they need to overcome," Langer said. "The Warrior Games is not just about the games; it really is about adaptive sports and trying to get folks to do things differently."

Coleman currently works with Soldiers who are recovering from leg and shoulder injuries. Sometimes this means starting a Soldier with a bow that takes less strength to shoot it, until he has built up his strength.

In other cases, more drastic measures must be taken.

"I worked with a quadriplegic once," Coleman said. "We set the bow up for him and he used his teeth to draw back and release."

"The coach has to be able to change the archery to fit the archer."

Last year, Coleman spearheaded a collaborative effort to get JBLM's wounded servicemembers involved in shooting at the Skookum Archers Club in Puyallup, where Coleman is a member. Each week he and Parker Ayers, Adaptive Recreation Specialist at Metro Parks Tacoma, go to the Skookum Archery Club range where they meet with a handful of Soldiers assigned to the Warrior Transition Battalion to work on their archery skills along with members of the community who have disabilities.

Specialist Damon P. Kirry, now a signal support systems specialist currently assigned to the Warrior Transition Battalion at JBLM participates in the archery program, though he did not make it to this year's Warrior Games.

"It helps me focus," Kirry said of archery. "It seems to clear my head. It also helps with motivation."

Kirry suffered combat-related shoulder and back injuries in Afghanistan, he said. He recently began involved in archery again.

"I've always loved archery; I've been shooting since I was a little kid. The Army got me back into it and that's pretty great."

In addition to providing some financial support to the program through donations of equipment, the Adaptive Recreation Department also provides the stability of having permanent community members participate as coaches and as athletes.

"Some of these people have similar injuries," Ayers said. "We see the value of helping each other."

"There's a common bond with folks that have been injured in combat," Langer said The Warrior Games provides injured servicemembers a chance to meet other people with similar injuries and develop camaraderie.

To be eligible to compete, the servicemember or veteran has to have some kind of physical or mental injury and must be medically cleared by a doctor.