In the Mix
On Wednesday nights the Vaughan City Lashers wheelchair basketball team hold an open practice at a local community centre. While some arrive in their day-to-day chairs and transfer to a sports chair, around half of the team walk their chairs into the gym and strap themselves in. When scrimmage starts, the two groups are largely indistinguishable.
Participation of able-bodied players in wheelchair basketball isn’t uncommon, especially in Canada where they play as high as the provincial level. While controversial, integration has contributed to the competitiveness and growth of the sport in Canada.
Two years ago, Frank Iannuzzi, head coach of the Lashers, was on the brink of dissolving his team. “There was a time where [LG2] we had struggled filling up a full lineup,” Iannuzzi says. When he decided to run open practises for both able-bodied and disabled players in the community, attendance spiked. Now, he says roughly half of his players are able-bodied, although for him, it’s not only about numbers. The integrated Lahsers scrimmage allows for him and his Nephew, Higor Silva, who’s able-bodied, to play a sport together. He says the sport breaks down barriers. “When you’re out on the court and that competitive side comes out, you forget,” Iannuzzi says.
According to Silva the competition between him and his uncle has changed the dynamic of their relationship. “It’s better because I can joke around with him and say he’s getting old and slower on the court,” Igor said with a smile. It’s also meant finding a sport that he loves and could excel in. He was 12 when he was encouraged to try the sport while he was watching his uncle play at a Lashers practice. Since, he’s made team Ontario and helped his team win gold in the Canada Games; a feat that he says he owes to his fellow Lashers. “I never thought I would be where I am right now,” Igor said. “Everything I know today and everything I’m still learning is because of them.”
Christina Swett, another able-bodied player on the Lashers says it’s the most inclusive sport there is. At a similar open practice in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she fell in love with the sport and advanced to the provincial level as well. After a successful competitive career, she decided to remain involved with the game, coaching a youth team in Toronto. In her time at the helm she’s seen what integration can do. Right now, she coaches twin boys, one of whom has a disability. Wheelchair basketball provides them a battleground for their sibling rivalry. “Get them on the court and the kid who has the disability is the one rubbing it in his brother’s face,” Swett says.
The benefit of integration has sparked the creation of Bridging the Gap, an initiative that introduces Para-sports to children through demonstrations and by encouraging participation. Nicole Jacobs, the provincial coordinator of the program says they try to present the chair in a certain light.
“We always try to explain that just as if your buying proper shoes for soccer, you have to sit in a proper chair to play a wheelchair sport,” Jacobs says.
At the higher levels however, it’s a little more complicated than strapping everyone into a chair. Competitive wheelchair basketball ensures fair competition with a classification system where each player is assigned a number according to his or her functional ability on the court. Lower class athletes are more limited in their function. At the provincial level, classifications range from 1 to 4.5. The sum total of the rankings on the court for a given team cannot exceed 14. Able-bodied players are assigned a 4.5.
Yet even with this system in place, integration was once considered taboo. Frank Iannuzzi, who played for the Lashers competitively when they were named the Spitfires, remembers being booed at games and even banned from tournaments for putting able-bodied athletes on the court.
Shawn Courchesne, who’s played for the Ontario team, says that classifications make differences in ability a non-issue. “That’s one of the reasons I love wheelchair basketball,” Courchesne says. “It doesn’t matter if you have LeBron James on your team, you’re going to still have three people that have disabilities that are matched up to the points of another team.”
For Silva, the team aspect built into the classification system is why he prefers wheelchair basketball to standing basketball. “With stand up everyone tries to show off their own talent,” Silva says. As far as fair competition goes, Silva remembers a time where his lack of experience manoeuvring the sports chair made him a target for faster more experienced players on the floor.
Courchesne, who’s classified as a one on the court with no function from mid-chest down, understands the advantage able-bodied players have. Hip and core strength for example can allow a player to turn their chair quickly without having to touch their wheels. He says it heightens the level of competition both in game and in practice. For him an able-bodied player’s individual advantage is a challenge he enjoys. “I love playing against people that are able-bodied knowing that I have half my body and I can do more than you can with your full body,” Courchesne says. “It’s just a little fun fact that you keep in the back of your mind.”
The Quick and Dirty on Wheelchair Basketball
