Ask Stephanie Wheeler her long-term goals and she’s quick to mention the 2010 World Basketball Championships, an excursion to England that could add more hardware to the gold medals she won as a member of the 2004 and 2008 United States Paralympic teams.
However, she’s quick to point out that as exciting as that possibility might be, her focal point is the next three days here in Colorado. A member of the University of Alabama women’s team, Wheeler begins competing this morning in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s (NWBA) national championships.
“As many championships as we’ve won at this school, it would be such an honor to the win the first in this sport — we’d love to be a part of that,” Wheeler said Tuesday after a workout at the Gold Crown Fieldhouse in Lakewood.
Alabama is one of 10 women’s teams that qualified for the championships, which will hold competitions in five divisions. In all, more than 1,000 male and female athletes with physical disabilities will participate in the tournaments.
“It’s a great opportunity for people to see the competition across the entire association,” U.S. Olympic Committee spokeswoman Susan Katz said. “There will be young kids seeing adults; girls who will get the chance to see where basketball can take them, whether it’s contributing to their community or even representing their country.”
Wheeler started for the U.S. team that beat Germany for the gold medal in Beijing last summer, a highlight in a career that began six years after she lost the use of her legs following a car accident at age 6.
“It was the first disabled sport I was introduced to,” Wheeler said of basketball. “I didn’t know what was going to be out there for me athletically, but I just loved it from Day One.”
It may not be a coincidence, Wheeler adds, that she’s from North Carolina — “Tobacco Road; so I guess basketball is in my blood.”
The same can be said for countless others in the sport. Wheeler’s coach, Brent Hardin, has been coaching physically disabled athletes for the last six years. Hardin used to coach able-bodied players but while working on his master’s degree he took a class on adapted sport.
From there, he said, working with disabled athletes “seemed like what I was supposed to do.”
Hardin is taking a shortsighted approach to the competition, which is a double-elimination format up until Friday’s championship game.
Last year, the Tide lost the title game to Illinois. Rather than look ahead to a rematch, Hardin said his squad will “play each moment the best we can against whoever is in front of us — after that we’ll see where we end up.”
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com
