planomateo
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Good read.
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/03/crimson_tide_wheelchair_basket.html
Crimson Tide wheelchair basketball: Home of determined athletes, not feel-good stories
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Don't call them inspirational.
University of Alabama wheelchair basketball players cringe when they're portrayed as a picture of courage. That makes for a tearjerker story, but it's useless when practice beckons after the alarm clock goes off before 5 a.m.
They are athletes, first and foremost. And they find that the inspirational angle -- however well-intentioned and perhaps even accurate -- sells the players short of who they are and their goal to be recognized like any able-bodied college athlete.
Jared Arambula, Alabama's standout men's player, displayed his mangled hands after a National Intercollegiate Wheelchair Basketball Tournament game this week at Lakeshore Foundation. A pinky is forever dislocated and callouses are all over.
"I super glue this cut so it doesn't split open," Arambula said, pointing to one spot of a battered hand. "My hands get destroyed. I get cortisone shots in my shoulders to be able to push. Your body is not made for doing this. After four or five years of college basketball, you have to piece yourself together because it starts rubbing bone on bone."
Alabama women's player Lindsey Metz hears two reactions when people hear she's on the wheelchair basketball team.
"One is the, 'Awww, that's great,' because people's initial reaction is that it's kind of separate from a sport," she said. "The other reaction is, 'Oh man, you guys are really great.' You can tell who's really watched us before."
If you happen to be inspired, so be it. But the Alabama women would rather upset rival and defending champion Wisconsin-Whitewater in today's final at 1 p.m., and the Alabama men badly want their first championship at 3 p.m.
Brent Hardin, the 46-year-old director of Alabama's adapted athletics program, keeps reminding himself how far the department has come in a decade. He's grateful for the university's support and calls Alabama a "leader" for disabled athletes.
But he knows there's a long way to go. He's not talking wins and losses. He can't help but be frustrated over the extent to which society accepts disabled athletes as competitive athletes.
After a shootaround this week, Hardin glanced at Charlie Katica, the 33-year-old, first-year Alabama women's coach. When Hardin stepped down as head coach, Katica inherited a team that won three straight national titles from 2009 to 2011 and opened some eyes in Tuscaloosa because, well, that's what national titles do in Tuscaloosa.
"I would love if somebody wrote Coach Charlie has to do a better job, he's got to motivate his players more, they didn't play defense, they choked," Hardin said. "That criticism sharpens you and raises people's expectations."
Hardin's goal is to every day provide his disabled athletes the same opportunity that every Crimson Tide athlete has on campus. It's the message the U.S. Department of Education sounded in January by saying students with disabilities must be given a fair shot to play on a traditional sports team or have their own leagues.
"Right now, the public doesn't really see us as being elite athletes," Hardin said. "They see it as being kind of fun and inspirational. Expectations are low. Funding is low. The support is low. Media coverage is low. And the overall quality of the product, if we're honest about where we are, is really low. But if you impact any of those things in a really positive way, it's going to impact all of the others."
You can almost see the wheels spinning in Hardin's head. He's still dreaming.
Building a vision
The dream started in 2003 with $5,000. That was the startup grant Hardin and his wife, Dr. Margaret Stran, received from the Christopher Reeve Foundation to make Alabama the third women's collegiate wheelchair basketball program.
In Robert Witt, who had just been hired as Alabama's president, Hardin found an ally who he says "got it right from the start." Witt came from the University of Texas-Arlington, which has a strong wheelchair basketball program.
"I told the department chair what I wanted to do," Hardin said, "but I don't think they exactly knew what we really wanted to do."
Women's basketball was started first with the idea it could be competitive quickly since Alabama supports winners. Men's basketball was added in 2006, and Hardin's program has since added tennis, rowing and golf.
The program, which is not part of the athletics department, has a budget of around $500,000 -- about 90 percent of which comes from some type of university funding, Hardin said. There are two full-time coaches, one-part-time coach, one volunteer coach and six full athletic scholarships (three men, three women).
Creativity is needed to supplement scholarships for the other 16 athletes. A lot of money comes from a federal vocational rehabilitation program. Alabama targets veterans who want to return to school and can get military benefits. (Two war veterans on the men's team left, one due to family issues and the other because of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Arambula, who is on a full scholarship sponsored by a doctor.)
Only one of the 19 players listed on the Crimson Tide's rosters this week come from Alabama. Eight are from different countries, including some who play on their national Paralympic team.
Just 12 universities are officially sanctioned in the college division of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. Some other universities have club teams that don't go by the NWBA rules, which try to follow NCAA guidelines yet have significant differences, such as five-year eligibility.
At this week's national championship, just three women's teams and eight men's teams are participating. Some of the early-round games, frankly, are bad. The players and coaches know it.
No. 8 men's seed Auburn, which had a 4-14 regular-season record, trailed 30-1 against No. 1 Texas-Arlington before finally making a field goal. No one was surprised given that Auburn is only in its third season and had no reserve players.
The Alabama women's team has beaten the Auburn men by 40 to 50 points in the past. Yet this is a case where Alabama wants Auburn to improve because that can only help the sport, not to mention provide a nearby opponent to save travel costs.
"You can only have so many college teams; there wouldn't be enough players," said Arambula after flirting with a triple-double in Alabama's opening-round rout of Southwest Minnesota State. "How many kids get disabled a year? How many of them can actually play sports? How many of their parents will make the sacrifices?"
Arambula was born disabled and has scattered sensation in his body. He grew so frustrated with his 5-year-old wheelchair baseball league -- "there was no winning or losing, just a free pizza token" -- that he joined competitive leagues and hasn't stopped.
At the age of 10, Arambula had the stats to make an able-bodied baseball All-Star team but wasn't allowed to play due to his disability. His dad finally had the heart to tell him why at the age of 18. For years, Arambula's parents made 14-hour drives from Indiana to Minnesota so their son could play five basketball games in two days.
"I don't know how many parents are able to do that," Arambula said. "They want to baby their kids: 'Can he do this? Can he do this?' But they can. What choice do we have? We either die or don't play a sport. I wish the perception was different."
A fifth-year senior, Arambula has professional offers to play in Germany, where he could make $1,000 a month plus expense allowances. Pro wheelchair basketball is a bigger deal in Europe than America. Going to Turkey can be worth six figures.
Arambula is going overseas to stay in shape for his goal of making the 2016 U.S. Paralympics team. He plans to keep working on a master's degree for his backup plan of teaching.
"Playing this sport, you're using muscles the human body is not made to be doing," said Arambula, who two weeks ago played every minute of five games during a 38-hour period. "You start to fall apart a little bit, year by year, and you're already disabled."
Title IX moment for disabled athletes
The shot was ridiculous. Arambula drove down the lane, fell over when another wheelchair crashed into him, and still made a scoop shot while fouled.
If the basket seemed startling to new observers of wheelchair basketball, it was routine for Arambula, who practices the play with able-bodied people pushing him. That's the best way to perfect it since Arambula has no lower back muscles and needs to rely solely on upper body strength.
Shots like that are worked on in early-morning practices, film sessions and weight training for both Alabama teams. Players spend upwards of 30 to 35 hours a week on basketball in addition to classes. Like able-bodied athletes, that's the price to pay to play in college.
"Once you see us falling on the floor and yelling at each other, you know we want it," said Cindy Oullett, an Alabama women's player and Canadian national team member. "The inspirational story can be on the side a little bit for 40 minutes."
So players crumble to the floor while chasing the ball or getting smashed on picks.
They sink outside shots into baskets equivalent of 17-foot goals if able-bodied players shot at that height.
They work on typical basketball strategies, such as transition defense and setting picks, except "chair position" is the key term for proper screens.
They hear coaches spout cliches -- "play to our strengths," "take it one game at a time," "win or go home" -- and then sometimes say them, too.
But opportunities remain minimal for a lot of disabled athletes. There are high schools who don't give varsity letters to wheelchair players or refuse to even allow wheelchairs on courts, "as if wheelchair rubber will do more damage than shoe rubber," said Arambula.
Last summer, the NCAA formed a disabilities subcommittee to explore the possibilities of expanding athletic opportunities for disabled college students. It was the NCAA's first committee on the topic since a short-lived one dissolved in 1982.
If the NCAA ever sponsors disabled sports, track and field would be the most likely candidate because it's expanding faster at high schools than any sport and would be relatively cheap to add. Colleges could be incentivized to integrate by including wheelchair events into national championship scoring for entire track and field teams.
The U.S. Department of Education recently said that disabled students can join traditional teams if schools make "reasonable modifications" to accommodate them. If doing so would fundamentally change the sport, the department directs schools to create parallel athletic programs with comparable standing.
The 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act already prohibited schools from discriminating against students with disabilities. But the new directive -- the significance of which is hailed by activists as great as Title IX was for women's sports -- explicitly says access to sports is a right.
"Now it's going to take lawsuits and follow-up to see what that really means," said Hardin, who gave up being Alabama's head women's coach in part to focus on the program's administrative duties. "College athletes with disabilities right now are where women's sports were 40 years. I don't know if it's going to change in my lifetime."
For this week, the focus is about a favorite habit at Alabama: Winning. Arambula wants the men's team to go from last as a freshman to national champion as a senior, a turnaround not totally unlike what a famous football coach did.
"At practice, sometimes we get kicked off the court just so Nick Saban and his coaches can play able-bodied basketball," Arambula said, laughing at the thought. "It's like, what are you guys doing? Go coach! They sit and watch us for maybe two minutes.
"But in that two minutes, we can change people's lives and show them we're athletes."
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/03/crimson_tide_wheelchair_basket.html
Crimson Tide wheelchair basketball: Home of determined athletes, not feel-good stories
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Don't call them inspirational.
University of Alabama wheelchair basketball players cringe when they're portrayed as a picture of courage. That makes for a tearjerker story, but it's useless when practice beckons after the alarm clock goes off before 5 a.m.
They are athletes, first and foremost. And they find that the inspirational angle -- however well-intentioned and perhaps even accurate -- sells the players short of who they are and their goal to be recognized like any able-bodied college athlete.
Jared Arambula, Alabama's standout men's player, displayed his mangled hands after a National Intercollegiate Wheelchair Basketball Tournament game this week at Lakeshore Foundation. A pinky is forever dislocated and callouses are all over.
"I super glue this cut so it doesn't split open," Arambula said, pointing to one spot of a battered hand. "My hands get destroyed. I get cortisone shots in my shoulders to be able to push. Your body is not made for doing this. After four or five years of college basketball, you have to piece yourself together because it starts rubbing bone on bone."
Alabama women's player Lindsey Metz hears two reactions when people hear she's on the wheelchair basketball team.
"One is the, 'Awww, that's great,' because people's initial reaction is that it's kind of separate from a sport," she said. "The other reaction is, 'Oh man, you guys are really great.' You can tell who's really watched us before."
If you happen to be inspired, so be it. But the Alabama women would rather upset rival and defending champion Wisconsin-Whitewater in today's final at 1 p.m., and the Alabama men badly want their first championship at 3 p.m.
Brent Hardin, the 46-year-old director of Alabama's adapted athletics program, keeps reminding himself how far the department has come in a decade. He's grateful for the university's support and calls Alabama a "leader" for disabled athletes.
But he knows there's a long way to go. He's not talking wins and losses. He can't help but be frustrated over the extent to which society accepts disabled athletes as competitive athletes.
After a shootaround this week, Hardin glanced at Charlie Katica, the 33-year-old, first-year Alabama women's coach. When Hardin stepped down as head coach, Katica inherited a team that won three straight national titles from 2009 to 2011 and opened some eyes in Tuscaloosa because, well, that's what national titles do in Tuscaloosa.
"I would love if somebody wrote Coach Charlie has to do a better job, he's got to motivate his players more, they didn't play defense, they choked," Hardin said. "That criticism sharpens you and raises people's expectations."
Hardin's goal is to every day provide his disabled athletes the same opportunity that every Crimson Tide athlete has on campus. It's the message the U.S. Department of Education sounded in January by saying students with disabilities must be given a fair shot to play on a traditional sports team or have their own leagues.
"Right now, the public doesn't really see us as being elite athletes," Hardin said. "They see it as being kind of fun and inspirational. Expectations are low. Funding is low. The support is low. Media coverage is low. And the overall quality of the product, if we're honest about where we are, is really low. But if you impact any of those things in a really positive way, it's going to impact all of the others."
You can almost see the wheels spinning in Hardin's head. He's still dreaming.
Building a vision
The dream started in 2003 with $5,000. That was the startup grant Hardin and his wife, Dr. Margaret Stran, received from the Christopher Reeve Foundation to make Alabama the third women's collegiate wheelchair basketball program.
In Robert Witt, who had just been hired as Alabama's president, Hardin found an ally who he says "got it right from the start." Witt came from the University of Texas-Arlington, which has a strong wheelchair basketball program.
"I told the department chair what I wanted to do," Hardin said, "but I don't think they exactly knew what we really wanted to do."
Women's basketball was started first with the idea it could be competitive quickly since Alabama supports winners. Men's basketball was added in 2006, and Hardin's program has since added tennis, rowing and golf.
The program, which is not part of the athletics department, has a budget of around $500,000 -- about 90 percent of which comes from some type of university funding, Hardin said. There are two full-time coaches, one-part-time coach, one volunteer coach and six full athletic scholarships (three men, three women).
Creativity is needed to supplement scholarships for the other 16 athletes. A lot of money comes from a federal vocational rehabilitation program. Alabama targets veterans who want to return to school and can get military benefits. (Two war veterans on the men's team left, one due to family issues and the other because of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Arambula, who is on a full scholarship sponsored by a doctor.)
Only one of the 19 players listed on the Crimson Tide's rosters this week come from Alabama. Eight are from different countries, including some who play on their national Paralympic team.
Just 12 universities are officially sanctioned in the college division of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. Some other universities have club teams that don't go by the NWBA rules, which try to follow NCAA guidelines yet have significant differences, such as five-year eligibility.
At this week's national championship, just three women's teams and eight men's teams are participating. Some of the early-round games, frankly, are bad. The players and coaches know it.
No. 8 men's seed Auburn, which had a 4-14 regular-season record, trailed 30-1 against No. 1 Texas-Arlington before finally making a field goal. No one was surprised given that Auburn is only in its third season and had no reserve players.
The Alabama women's team has beaten the Auburn men by 40 to 50 points in the past. Yet this is a case where Alabama wants Auburn to improve because that can only help the sport, not to mention provide a nearby opponent to save travel costs.
"You can only have so many college teams; there wouldn't be enough players," said Arambula after flirting with a triple-double in Alabama's opening-round rout of Southwest Minnesota State. "How many kids get disabled a year? How many of them can actually play sports? How many of their parents will make the sacrifices?"
Arambula was born disabled and has scattered sensation in his body. He grew so frustrated with his 5-year-old wheelchair baseball league -- "there was no winning or losing, just a free pizza token" -- that he joined competitive leagues and hasn't stopped.
At the age of 10, Arambula had the stats to make an able-bodied baseball All-Star team but wasn't allowed to play due to his disability. His dad finally had the heart to tell him why at the age of 18. For years, Arambula's parents made 14-hour drives from Indiana to Minnesota so their son could play five basketball games in two days.
"I don't know how many parents are able to do that," Arambula said. "They want to baby their kids: 'Can he do this? Can he do this?' But they can. What choice do we have? We either die or don't play a sport. I wish the perception was different."
A fifth-year senior, Arambula has professional offers to play in Germany, where he could make $1,000 a month plus expense allowances. Pro wheelchair basketball is a bigger deal in Europe than America. Going to Turkey can be worth six figures.
Arambula is going overseas to stay in shape for his goal of making the 2016 U.S. Paralympics team. He plans to keep working on a master's degree for his backup plan of teaching.
"Playing this sport, you're using muscles the human body is not made to be doing," said Arambula, who two weeks ago played every minute of five games during a 38-hour period. "You start to fall apart a little bit, year by year, and you're already disabled."
Title IX moment for disabled athletes
The shot was ridiculous. Arambula drove down the lane, fell over when another wheelchair crashed into him, and still made a scoop shot while fouled.
If the basket seemed startling to new observers of wheelchair basketball, it was routine for Arambula, who practices the play with able-bodied people pushing him. That's the best way to perfect it since Arambula has no lower back muscles and needs to rely solely on upper body strength.
Shots like that are worked on in early-morning practices, film sessions and weight training for both Alabama teams. Players spend upwards of 30 to 35 hours a week on basketball in addition to classes. Like able-bodied athletes, that's the price to pay to play in college.
"Once you see us falling on the floor and yelling at each other, you know we want it," said Cindy Oullett, an Alabama women's player and Canadian national team member. "The inspirational story can be on the side a little bit for 40 minutes."
So players crumble to the floor while chasing the ball or getting smashed on picks.
They sink outside shots into baskets equivalent of 17-foot goals if able-bodied players shot at that height.
They work on typical basketball strategies, such as transition defense and setting picks, except "chair position" is the key term for proper screens.
They hear coaches spout cliches -- "play to our strengths," "take it one game at a time," "win or go home" -- and then sometimes say them, too.
But opportunities remain minimal for a lot of disabled athletes. There are high schools who don't give varsity letters to wheelchair players or refuse to even allow wheelchairs on courts, "as if wheelchair rubber will do more damage than shoe rubber," said Arambula.
Last summer, the NCAA formed a disabilities subcommittee to explore the possibilities of expanding athletic opportunities for disabled college students. It was the NCAA's first committee on the topic since a short-lived one dissolved in 1982.
If the NCAA ever sponsors disabled sports, track and field would be the most likely candidate because it's expanding faster at high schools than any sport and would be relatively cheap to add. Colleges could be incentivized to integrate by including wheelchair events into national championship scoring for entire track and field teams.
The U.S. Department of Education recently said that disabled students can join traditional teams if schools make "reasonable modifications" to accommodate them. If doing so would fundamentally change the sport, the department directs schools to create parallel athletic programs with comparable standing.
The 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act already prohibited schools from discriminating against students with disabilities. But the new directive -- the significance of which is hailed by activists as great as Title IX was for women's sports -- explicitly says access to sports is a right.
"Now it's going to take lawsuits and follow-up to see what that really means," said Hardin, who gave up being Alabama's head women's coach in part to focus on the program's administrative duties. "College athletes with disabilities right now are where women's sports were 40 years. I don't know if it's going to change in my lifetime."
For this week, the focus is about a favorite habit at Alabama: Winning. Arambula wants the men's team to go from last as a freshman to national champion as a senior, a turnaround not totally unlike what a famous football coach did.
"At practice, sometimes we get kicked off the court just so Nick Saban and his coaches can play able-bodied basketball," Arambula said, laughing at the thought. "It's like, what are you guys doing? Go coach! They sit and watch us for maybe two minutes.
"But in that two minutes, we can change people's lives and show them we're athletes."
