Members of the championship-winning team in the first annual Rollin’ Rebels Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in the Turner Center last week. Eight teams competed in the tournament, which was formed to bring light to Disability Awareness Month.
BY CURRIE MCKINLEY
cdmckin1@go.olemiss.edu
The University of Mississippi held its first ever Rollin’ Rebels Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in the Turner Center last week.
Eight teams of five to 10 volunteers — most of whom were able-bodied students who before last week had never played a wheelchair sport — competed for the opportunity to call themselves champions in Ole Miss wheelchair basketball.
“The wheelchair basketball tournament was probably the most fun I’ve ever had from a university-sponsored event,” said Jodi Gilles, junior exercise science major and member of the championship-winning team. “It was such a blast. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Intended to be the athletic centerpiece of Disability Awareness Month, the tournament was the result of a collaboration between Stacey Reycraft, director of Student Disability Services, and Jasmine Townsend, assistant professor in the department of exercise science.
“I think that this is really important, especially given the horrible things that happened in Boston and given how many victims had to undergo amputations,” Townsend said. “All of those people can still live fulfilling lives and participate in sports in an adaptive way.”
Reycraft, who had been interested in the project since its inception last spring, is grateful that the tournament finally became a reality.
“I didn’t think it was going to happen at all this year until I got in contact with Jasmine Townsend.”
Townsend, the owner of the wheelchairs that made the tournament possible, was glad for her chairs to be raising the awareness she intended them to raise.
“The whole intent of buying the wheelchairs was to have wheelchair events going on at the university and to have them be involved in intramural.”
Senior liberal arts major Jacob Hickman enjoyed the sport despite his initial concerns and questions.
“I didn’t know what to expect when my friend asked me to sign up,” Hickman said. “But as soon as we started playing I realized, ‘This is so much fun.’ We’ve all talked about how we’d love to get sports wheelchairs and play all the time.”
Reycraft and Townsend would like wheelchair basketball to be not only a yearly event, but also a seasonal intramural sport and constant reminder of the vitality of which the disabled are capable.
“I’d love for wheelchair basketball to be a real intramural sport,” Gilles said. “It’s not fair that the disabled students can’t really participate in regular intramural sports. This would allow everyone to have something they can play together.”
