BBS Sports Blog Week 6: Wheelchair Basketball Player, Sarah Grady’s, Experiences As A Paralympian

We started the Blue Badge Style Sports Blog to help advise less able people on how to get into sports. Each week we feature a different Paralympic athlete writing about their own sport.

This week, we’re featuring Wheelchair Basketball player, Sarah Grady, who has represented Great Britain at three Paralympic games. She’s written a fantastic article about how she fell in love with her sport and how much fun everybody can have playing it! Here’s her story in her own words:

One of the first questions I get asked when I talk to people about playing wheelchair basketball is, what made me pick this sport? It’s something that, over the years, I have found easier and easier to answer – I love it, plain and simple; I fell in love with wheelchair basketball the first time I held a basketball.  I suppose I should start at the beginning, where I first found my love…

I went to something called the National Junior Games, at Stoke Mandeville in 1997, at the age of 13.  Back then you tried out a lot of different sports. For instance, I had a go at athletics, tennis, table tennis and (randomly) snooker…but then I tried wheelchair basketball and something sparked inside of me. 

The people who were already playing when I got to the have-a-go session were zooming around, crashing into each other and generally having a blast!  I couldn’t wait to try – which I had to do in my day chair as, at the time, there weren’t any spare sports chairs (as far as I can remember).  I was completely rubbish – I mean, I was ‘couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a cow’ kinda rubbish!  But for some reason it didn’t matter.  I was with friends and we were all rubbish together. The most important thing was that I was having fun.  Literally, from that day on, it was all I wanted to do.

It had left that much of an impression on me that I kept on at my mum to find me a club nearby, but I wanted one where there were other women – for some reason that was really important to me.  The day came when I was going to my first session at Force WBC (now called London Titans WBC) aaaaaannddd…I stood in the hallway crying because I was scared and didn’t want to go!!!  My mum said that I had to go that night and if I hated it that much, I wouldn’t have to back go again – I agreed to go and have never looked back!

A year or so passed and I attended a GB Women’s trial camp. I was told by the coach, at the end of the weekend, that I needed to work on this, this, that, that, this and this…basically it was a long list! I felt so deflated, and kind of annoyed as I had only been playing a short time!

Then in February 2000, all of the girls in my club told me to come along to this GB camp they had coming up. I was wary, due to what the coach had said to me previously, so I said no. It was only when the coach rang me on the Friday, saying he wanted me to be there, that eventually made me go. Again, I’m glad I didn’t let my stubbornness get in the way, as two months later, over my 16^th birthday, I went to my first tournament in America (and fouled out in my first ever international match, whoops!). Then, just four short months from first being in the GB squad, I was selected for the Sydney Paralympics – gobsmacked doesn’t even begin to cover how I felt!

Fast-forward to now – during the last thirteen years I have gone on to represent my country at the 2004 Athens Paralympics and more recently the 2012 London Paralympics as well as numerous ‘friendly’ matches, Europeans and a Worlds.  I have also taken a four and a half year break (between 2007 & 2011) to have my son Joshua, got a job, got married and bought a house! 

I came back to basketball in 2011 with more fire and passion than ever before. I had missed international competition so much.  I also missed the fitness – I never tried to get rid of the baby weight, so when I returned to GB I needed to lose weight and get my fitness back. I managed to lose most the weight and get pretty fit but it was hard!  Being less mobile, trying to keep fit is difficult: basketball works all of your upper body, trunk as well as shoulders/arms so along with being fun, it helps you to keep fit as well!  Also, I felt sooo slow compared to the youngsters we have in the team and the camps seemed a lot harder than I remembered from when I was younger – oh to be a young whippersnapper again!!

So, “what does happen at a training camp?” I hear you cry!! Well, we generally arrive on a Friday evening and have a 2-3 hour session, then on Saturday we will have 3 sessions which are the same length split over the day and on a Sunday there will be 1 or 2 sessions.  The sessions are made up of shooting drills, defence and offence work, passing and other skills we need to practice/learn as well.  We make sure to keep them no longer than 3 hours as, past that, people’s attention spans wander and you lose intensity – it’s better to have shorter sessions, with higher intensity, than longer sessions, which then tend to be lacklustre.  If you do the latter then it will transfer into your game.

It’s all about turning up with enthusiasm, no matter how tired you are.  It’s not just training camps we do: we train individually, as well, with gym sessions, court sessions – where we practice shooting and chair skills – and even just going out on the road and pushing for a few miles.

With everything we do in training, we try to emulate how we’re going to be in competition – from getting ready/psyched up before a session to controlling what we’re eating – it’s all preparation.  In competition there are some things you can’t control, like whether the transport to a game is on time or what the food is like.  It’s a pain, but you kind of have to deal with it the best you can.  We have a nutritionist who helps us pick the right type of foods, so even if what’s on the menu isn’t what we would normally eat, we can try to get a healthy option. 

Competitions can bring out the best and worst of people, especially at something as big as a Paralympics. When you’re together 24/7, for about 3 weeks…it can get a bit claustrophobic!  Generally the team gets on pretty well, and in London there were no arguments (that I knew of anyway!).  A daily schedule during a competition will be something like this:

– Breakfast
– Have a training session if game is in the evening
– Lunch
– Rest
– Dinner
– Game
– Recovery/bed

It’s pretty jam packed, so the opportunity to get stressed with each other is quite high. Even the smallest thing can set you off sometimes.  That’s one of the things about a team sport, you can’t choose who’s on the team – only the coach can – we’re like a family and we rely on each other to reach a common goal.  So counting to ten can sometimes be the best idea to maintain harmony in the team!

I have re-written the next few paragraphs about 5 times and I still can’t quite find the words to describe what it’s like being at a Paralympics.  All I can say is that it’s one of the most amazing, exciting experiences you can ever have; it can also be absolutely devastating.  London was a huge mix of emotions for me, it was the culmination of a year of hard work, excitement for all the things I had been involved with (playing at St Pauls Cathedral, going and speaking to numerous schools etc.) and it was a year I truly, honestly believed was going to end better for the team than it did.

We ended up coming 7^th, which I suppose isn’t bad in the grand scheme of things – but when I think of our quarter final game, where we were within 3 minutes of beating Germany (the eventual gold medal winners), I wonder what could have been had we just closed the game out.

Some people ask me if London is the best Paralympics I have been to and, to be honest, I still don’t know. Sydney was my first, so it was special and no other Paralympics can replace that one. But London was AMAZING – the crowd, the hype, the fact my brother, who had NEVER seen me play basketball before, could actually come and watch a game – at a Paralympics and not just a league game – meant a great deal to me.  But then, because of what happened on that day – that devastating quarter-final day – it has kind of tarred it…only slightly, and I’m sure in years to come I will get over it, but right now the emotions are still too raw!

I’m often asked whether there is a certain type of person or disability that shouldn’t/can’t play wheelchair basketball, or if there is an age limit. To be honest, if you can push a chair yourself, you can play. Personality-wise, it really helps if you are happy to work as part of a team! With age – at my club we have kids as young as 4, to adults who are as old as about 50!  No age is too young or old to start.  There are also a number of different divisions people can play in, depending on whether you’re playing for recreation or if you want to become the best in the country/world!  If you want to get involved but you don’t live around London, then have a look on the British Wheelchair Basketball Association website, where you can find a club.

If you were inspired by the Paralympics, by wheelchair basketball or any other sports, don’t worry about whether you will be any good or not – everyone has to start somewhere! I have made some of the best friends and have kept fit in the process…so what do you have to lose by getting involved in sport?

Thanks Sarah for a really fun, engaging and informative article about Wheelchair Basketball. It sounds like an absolute blast.  If you want to read more about Sarah Grady’s experiences you should take a look at her blog.