Building No. 4 at the Great Lakes Naval Station near North Chicago is a busy place on Saturdays.

While a youth bocce ball game is rolling along on the west side of the gym, basketball drills are in progress on the east end. Parents sit on the sidelines watching. Younger siblings drink juice boxes and run around.

The scene is pretty typical, except the players are in wheelchairs - special chairs with outward sloping wheels to accommodate the twists and turns demanded by the sports.

The special chairs and the activities are offered through the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association, a nonprofit group dedicated to adapting sports for children and adults in Lake County and southeast Wisconsin who have physical or visual disabilities.

Nine-year-old Alec Tranel of Libertyville has been shooting hoops with the group for five years. Although a bit of a trip to play round ball, Saturdays at the Navy base are his only opportunity to participate in the sport he loves.

Alec, who suffers from a spinal cord injury, gets to referee the games played in his gym classes at Adler Park Elementary School in Libertyville, but at the association games, the slight boy with the blond hair and quick smile plays.

"If it weren't for GLASA, I don't know of any other outlet," said his dad, Roch.

Alec has made friends with another player, Nathaniel. Feigning a stern look, Roch said sometimes the two have to be separated because they have too much fun.

What does Alec like best about his sport?

"All the running around," he said, proving he doesn't need his legs to get a workout or to cover a lot of territory.

Covering territory was important to director Cindy Housner, too, when in 1999 she spun the organization off from the Special Recreation Association of Central Lake County. Depending only on some grant money and donations from a local fun run, Housner forged ahead with the conviction that physically handicapped kids and adults in the suburbs needed adaptive programs as much as people living in Chicago or Milwaukee.

"To get bigger and to serve more kids, we needed to be independent," she said.

They swim, do water aerobics, bike and snow ski. For brave high schoolers and adults with visual impairments, there's goalball, a reverse dodge ball, where participants use their other senses to keep ahead of the ball. The program also offers peer mentors, social and parent-support activities. Program fees are charged, but no one is denied participation because of an inability to pay, according to program literature.

Mary Griffith, 12, of Mundelein, started out playing basketball with the association, but in the past five years, she has branched out into swimming and road racing. This year, she qualified in road racing for the Junior National Disabled Championships in Arizona, where some 240 athletes between the ages of 7 and 20 raced each other in wheeled carts.

"It was really hot, but a fun experience," said the sixth-grader, who was born with cerebral palsy and uses a walker to get around.

The program has allowed her daughter to be part of a team, learn cooperation and build self-esteem, said her mother, Laurie.

According to an International Paralympic Committee study quoted by Housner, students with disabilities tend to be spectators more often than students without disabilities. Only one in 25 children with a physical disability actively participate in any sports and recreation program outside of school.

Hunter Godsey, 9, of Gurnee is new to the association. His physical therapist recommended it to his mother, Sue. As a new basketball player, he is practicing shooting at a 6-foot basket. He also has to get used to the sports wheelchair.

Sue Godsey said he tries to play basketball in school, but his crutches tend to trip him up.

"This puts him on an even playing field," she said. "It's great for him to see other people with disabilities doing whatever they want to do."

Referred to by one volunteer as the "backbone" of the program, Nikki Krupa, 23, of Antioch, is the program supervisor. Fresh out of Winona State University in Minnesota with a degree in therapeutic recreation, Krupa spends all day Saturday with her charges.

Part motivator for the participants, part organizer for the program and all-around hard worker, she's on the job six or seven days a week, depending on the season and travels with the teams to competitions.

"I won't ever work a typical 9 to 5 (job)," Krupa said. "Every day is different. The kids are all different. The parents are all there rooting for them. It doesn't feel like a job."

And, so it seems that everyone connected with Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association is front and center following the group's motto: "No one sits on the sidelines."

For more information on the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association, call (847) 283-0908 or visit www.glasa.org.