UA Adapted Athletics Leaders Named 2026 Homecoming Parade Grand Marshals

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Two longtime leaders of the University of Alabama's Adapted Athletics program have been selected to lead this year's Homecoming Parade through downtown Tuscaloosa and campus.

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The UA National Alumni Association announced Wednesday that Brent Hardin, director of UA Adapted Athletics, and Margaret Stran, the program's associate director, have been named grand marshals for the 2026 University of Alabama Homecoming Parade.

Hardin and Stran have spent more than two decades building UA's Adapted Athletics program, which now serves more than 40 student-athletes and has won 24 national championships.

Both are associate professors of kinesiology at UA, while Stran earned her doctoral degree from the university in 2007.

The pair launched Alabama's women's wheelchair basketball program in 2003, followed by the men's wheelchair basketball program in 2005 and wheelchair tennis in 2011.

A para track and field program was added in 2023.

The program initially operated out of Foster Auditorium before Hardin and Stran began working with university leaders to raise money for a dedicated adapted athletics facility.

Those efforts culminated in the opening of the $10 million Stran-Hardin Arena in 2018. The 11,500-square-foot facility was the first collegiate facility specifically designed for student-athletes with disabilities and includes an NCAA regulation basketball court, workout areas, offices and meeting spaces.

UA followed in 2021 with the Parker-Haun Tennis Facility, which the university says is the only collegiate tennis facility in the country designed and operated specifically for adapted student-athletes.

Under their leadership, Alabama's women's wheelchair basketball team won its sixth consecutive and 12th overall National Wheelchair Basketball Association Intercollegiate National Championship last season. The men's program has won four national championships.

UA athletes have also competed in the Paralympics since 2004, with 18 current or former Alabama athletes and staff members participating in the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris.

The parade is set for Saturday, Oct. 24, beginning in downtown Tuscaloosa before proceeding through the UA campus ahead of Alabama's football game against Texas A&M.

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