Rolling with the Hits
Nathan Samuel remembers one of the first times he was levelled playing wheelchair rugby. As he rushed toward the goal line, he was tee-boned and sent careening out of bounds toward a group of spectators watching from the bench. Fortunately, they managed to clear their seats, narrowly escaping probable injury.
The collisions are likely the main reason why wheelchair rugby is one of the most popular sports amongst spectators. Samuel calls them the “sexy part” of the sport. The physicality and unique set of rules involved have given rise to a whole new group of athletes with spinal cord injuries and disabilities affecting mobility—most of whom couldn’t imagine the sport without the hits.
Duncan Campbell, one of the creators of wheelchair rugby, played hockey before a diving accident left him with quadriplegia. During the sports development, he says contact was non-negotiable. “There was no discussion about that,” he says. “The hitting was going to be part of the game.”
According to Campbell, the creation of the sport was a fluke. After a volunteer didn’t show up to a rehabilitation weight lifting session, Campbell and four others headed to a gymnasium down the hall. [LG1] With a volleyball and two garbage bins set up at either end of the court, they played something similar to basketball. After finding it difficult to raise the ball high enough, they decided it would be easier to instead carry it across a goal line, like in football or rugby. They initially called the game murderball. [LG2] When they later showcased it at the Canadian Games for the Physically Disabled, they had no idea how big the sport would become. “We weren’t global thinkers,” Campbell explains. He and his co-creators were between the ages of 19 and 23 at the time. Unworldliness aside, the sport has had a tremendous impact. After it's conception in 1977, the team of creators would rename the game wheelchair rugby to make the sport more marketable. Since, it's become a Paralympic sport and has impacted a variety of athletes around the world.
For Patrice Dagenais, watching his local wheelchair rugby team practice during his rehab in 2003 didn’t garner much interest. It wasn’t until two years later that he got the hard sell he needed from a documentary called Murderball. The main draw he gleaned from the film was the potential of representing his country in the Paralympics. He also admits that he thought the players looked “pretty badass.”
After a construction accident left him quadriplegic, Dagenais stayed active with rehab by riding a hand-bike. Wheelchair rugby, however, offered the former hockey player more than just exercise. “One of the things I missed the most after my injury was competition,” Dagenais says.
Charlene Alton, a recreation therapist who introduces sport to individuals with spinal cord injuries at the Toronto Lyndhurst [LG3] Cottage Program, says it’s about finding what makes her clients tick. For Dagenais, it’s the physicality. “Giving hits was something I was good at and I took pride in,” he says.
Alton explains that athletes often choose Para-sports [LG4] that are similar to what they competed in pre-injury. “I don’t have a million options for team sports to play,” Dagenais says. “It just so happened that rugby was perfect for my personality.” Dagenais’ fit in the sport is a little less serendipitous than he might imagine. The sport was created by a group of people who share his disability and his love for hockey.
Beyond a personal touch from its creators that makes the sport so unique is a set of specific guidelines for membership. In order to be eligible, players must have impairment in at least three of their limbs. It’s this minimum impairment that informs a classification system that allows players to reach their potential. Each player is assigned a classification ranging from 0.5 to 3.5 according to their functional ability. Players with lower function are assigned a lower number. The sum total of a team’s classification points on the court cannot exceed eight.
Nathan Samuel, who plays for his local Ottawa Stingers and has cerebral palsy, found he lacked the upper strength needed to shoot in wheelchair basketball. When he switched to wheelchair rugby at the age of 14, he was classified as a higher-functioning player and discovered a physicality that had been lying dormant in him during his wheelchair basketball days. “I’m a pretty gentle dude, but it’s fun when you get to unleash that other side of you,” Samuel says of the contact. “As someone with a congenital disability, it’s a side of me that I never thought I had.”
While the hits were a confidence booster, he also found that the sport changed his life off the court. Starting out as one of the younger players on his team, there was plenty he learned from his teammates. “A lot of the older guys took me under their wing and taught me how to accomplish certain day-to-day tasks,” Samuel says.
Today, Campbell can appreciate what he helped create nearly 40 years ago. The impact he’s had on those who may not have found a sport otherwise isn’t lost on him. “It gives them increased independence and mobility because they’re stronger,” Campbell says. “It opens up the world for them.”
