Wheelchair Basketball

Wheelchair Basketball

Our normal scouts’ night was changed to a Friday and at Long Marston village hall we had the exciting opportunity to try wheelchair basketball. Apart from Owen, it was the first time doing wheelchair basketball for us all, and we were all looking forward to it and couldn’t wait to play. They divided us into two groups of ten, one group went outside for an hour while the other group got used to the wheelchairs and played a few different games. Playing wheelchair basketball was a great experience and an amazing team sport. 

There were lots of things I thought would be different like the turning and the pushing; for example, I thought for the turning if you wanted to spin around and go the other way you would have to push one wheel and slowly manoeuvre yourself around. It turned out to be much more simple; you simply just spun one wheel backwards and grabbed both wheels when you had turned enough. The pushing was a lot harder than expected too. You couldn’t just push the wheels once and go really fast, you had to lean forward when you pushed to stop you falling backwards and that kind of hurt your back. You had to do big strong pushes to get a bit of speed up, so your arms and shoulders ached at the end. 

All in all, we had a great evening with the wheelchairs and couldn’t have done it without Adrian and his daughter Imogen from Hoopstars. 

As well as the fun we had, it made us realise how fit and skilful the 
para-athletes who compete in wheelchair basketball really are! 

By Will S 
Stag Patrol