Aim high, and dunk!

The Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India calls women players for its training camp ahead of the World Championships, 2019

In Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India founder Madhavi Lata’s eyes, 16-year-old P Rekha is the epitome of the change sports can bring in your life. “Before she started playing wheelchair basketball, she was the shyest girl I knew,” she says. In the months that she spent practising for the Asian Para Games qualifier in Thailand this year, Rekha bloomed. “She would socialise with everyone even if she couldn’t speak their language. When she came back from Thailand, she was the pride for her family.”

Lata has now trained her sights on the Wheelchair Basketball World Championship 2019. Donning the Nick Fury hat, she aims to assemble 25 players — her all-women Avengers — and train them to participate in the women’s category next year; the top performers will be selected for the national team. The training camp will be held free of cost at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor stadium for women under 23 and above 16 years of age, who will be coached by Suvarna Lamaye and Lee Roy Simon.

The rules for the game are not very different from basketball, says Lata. “The wheelchair is treated as a part of your body, in case of fouls,” she explains. “The only category is lower-limb disability.” According to a point system where severely disabled is one and least disabled is 4.5, the overall score of a team of five players must not exceed 14. “Even if the disability in your legs is not severe enough to require a wheelchair, you are still eligible for the game,” she adds.

Apart from basketball training, the WBFI will also provide food, accommodation and wheelchairs. Lata admits that generic wheelchairs aren’t ideal for playing. “A personalised wheelchair would allow better mobility. But we are doing what we can to first get people into the sport, then we can think about winning.”

Currently, the WBFI has nine players from all over India — Jammu and Kashmir to Tamil Nadu. However, training players has not been without challenges. “Most stadiums aren’t accessible, so we have to put in the additional infrastructure.” Many times, the problem is as basic as bathroom doors in hotels not being wide enough for a wheelchair to enter.

Lata wishes to encourage differently abled women to take part in sports. A national-level swimmer herself, despite having polio-induced paraplegia, a bad lung and spine compression, Lata’s words come from experience, “Sports made me the independent woman I am today. Twenty years ago, I would have never thought I would be travelling all over the world — alone.”

Most of all, wheelchair basketball, according to Lata, can be empowering, putting players in a healthy headspace as well. And as players at the 2017 Bali Cup can testify after winning third place, once back home you are treated with pride instead of pity.

The training camp will be from June 11 to June 22. For details, call 9841609601/9841098056 or email wbfiindia@gmail.com