Wheelchair team rolls to tourney win

By Medicine Hat News on February 5, 2020.

Every Thursday, Medicine Hat’s Mustangs take over a corner of the Family Leisure Centre gymnasium with their wheelchairs and play basketball.

This past weekend in Lethbridge, they took over in a far more competitive setting.

The Mustangs won what is likely their only event of the season, the Alberta B Wheelchair Basketball Tournament at the Lethbridge Senior Citizens Organization gym.

“It felt great,” said player-coach Dragana Vukovic. “I had to keep both hats on, player and coach, so I definitely look at things from a different perspective. But my team’s competitive, and I’m no different.”

Vukovic starred with Medicine Hat College’s Rattlers only three seasons ago and began volunteering with the local adaptive sport program as a way to give back to the community. Admittedly, she had a lot to learn about the wheelchair version of the game, with movement the most obvious difference.

But with able-bodied players needed to fill out the roster, Vukovic pulled on a jersey in Lethbridge and helped the team do better than they might have expected.

“Being in a player role, it was great,” said Vukovic, who had gone to a camp in Toronto last year to develop her knowledge of the sport, but hadn’t actually played a real game until this tournament. “Putting the jersey on was quite a feeling.”

Medicine Hat beat Calgary 34-24 and Edmonton 42-22, then lost 40-38 to Lethbridge in the four-team round robin.

Vukovic said the first win was the sweetest, but all of them showed how far Medicine Hat’s team has come.

“We played a Calgary team and I think last year we lost by 12 points to them, the year before it was a 20-30 point game,” she said. “To beat them this year it was a big step for us.”

The final was a rematch with the host team, with Medicine Hat edging the Steamers 35-32 Sunday in a game that came down to the final minute.

“We were up by five until maybe 50 seconds before the end. We went down the court, used a good chunk of the time again and they had point-two seconds left for a three-point shot,” said Vukovic. “We needed one stop to win the game.”

Lethbridge did get a shot off that hit the rim, but didn’t fall to force overtime.

Derek Whitson, the multiple-time Paralympian in sledge hockey who’s been playing golf for the Rattlers the last couple years, had eight of his game-high 16 points in the final quarter. Austin Yanke had six and both Angus Horsburgh and James Du Toit had four each for the Mustangs.

Matthew Hatch scored 13 for Lethbridge in the final. The Steamers don’t lose often and the hope is close matchups with Medicine Hat may become a more regular occurrence down the road.

“Two years ago when we played Lethbridge I think they beat us by 50,” said Vukovic. “They’ve just been dominating in this region for a while, haven’t had good competition so I think they are really excited.”

With only eight players available for the tournament, the Mustangs hope they can convince a couple more people to give the sport a try, whether they’ve got a disability or not. Contact Medicine Hat Adaptive Sport and Recreation (mhasr.com) for more information.

18
-17