Cycling for Heart Kids NZ

Inspirational teacher and...

Jack Adams first realised he was a little bit different from other kids when he was at primary school in a small town in Norfolk, in the UK. 

He was born with an ulnar club hand, a rare congenital malformation, which consists of an underdeveloped or missing ulnar bone.

“I remember being five or six and another kid in my class trying to bend my fingers straight, saying ‘I can straighten those for you’. That’s probably the earliest memory I have,” Adams said.

Now as a primary school teacher himself he has heard it all. His Central School students are very curious to ask what has happened to his hand. Was it a shark attack or had he been in an accident?

“I had a girl ask ‘Did you dip your hand in chocolate and eat your fingers when you were a baby?’”

Adams has never shied away from giving sports a go, something his parents encouraged early on.

His latest goal is the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge in November, when he will do the 80km “gravel grind”, raising money for Heart Kids NZ.  “It’s a bit of a step up for me. I’ve not done a big race like that.

“I’ve dealt with kids who have been affected by heart conditions. I just want to give back and help out,” he said.

In March he competed in the NZ Track and Field Championships, earning a silver medal in javelin and a bronze in shotput.

He also broke a New Zealand record in the shotput for his category Men Para Open F46.

F46 is for field athletes with moderately affected movement in one or both arms or the absence of limbs.

“I’ve played football since I was tiny growing up in England. As I got older, I started cycling and did that for years and years, and then just picked up athletics the last couple of years,” he said.

He has kept up his football in Gisborne, playing for HSOB.

His  family emigrated to New Zealand when he was 10, his mother coming to a  job at Porirua Hospital as a nurse.

He went to Tawa College but left at 16 to pursue other interests, and ended up as a teacher aide at a special needs school.

It was this work that inspired him to  become a teacher, and he completed a Bachelor of Arts and a graduate Diploma of Teaching, at Victoria University.

He moved to Hawera when he was offered a teaching job, “and  I loved it there”.

Like a lot of children, Adams wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up. A teacher helped him fulfil his childhood dream.

“I never thought I’d be able to because of my disability. The woodwork teacher at school was the chief of the Hawera fire brigade and he said, ‘Come down, we’ll take you’. I went along and from the first training, I just loved it.”

His wife Sarah comes from Tairāwhiti. The couple had been travelling the world for -six months when they found out they were expecting their first child, so came back to New Zealand in 2019 and settled in Gisborne.

“My wife wanted to be closer to her whānau and where she grew up, which is why I applied for the job at Central School. “

He has been a part of the Gisborne volunteer fire brigade for three-and-a-half years. He also volunteers his time to coach representative football.

“I just want to show other people that you can do stuff even if you do it slightly differently. I don’t want to let anything hold me back because I want to show the kids that they can do it,” Adams said.