March 1, 2026
Ep 7 (bonus): Wheelchair Basketball in Canada
Jocelyn Maffin (Tod's wife) joins Tod to discuss wheelchair basketball in Canada.✨ Did you enjoy this episode? Support the podcast and help me make season two at https://support.todmaffin.com
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WEBVTT
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[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to another bonus episode of Mirror Falls.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If you haven't listened to this week's episode about the farmers market, you should do that now.
00:25.738 --> 00:36.548
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have listened and you're worried this series just took a hard left into something dark, do not worry, this is still a story about decent people with complicated pasts.
00:36.828 --> 00:46.677
[SPEAKER_02]: This takes me rise a little as you learn more about the town secrets, but I promise the heart will always stay where it's been gentle, funny, and Canadian.
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[SPEAKER_02]: In the last episode, we met Jocelyn, who runs the dark side of the moon coffee shop.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The character is a former wheelchair basketball player.
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[SPEAKER_02]: She is based partly on my next guest, who was on Canada's national team for the sport.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Her name is Jocelyn Mathen.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, she's my wife, and she joins me now from our office, which is upstairs and past the guest bedroom.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Hello!
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hi!
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[SPEAKER_02]: I want to talk about Canada's contributions to wheelchair basketball because that's a huge part of the story, but can you walk us through how it's played is it the same size court the same basket and all that stuff?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, we play on, I should clarify, I don't play anymore, but the sport is played on a regulation collegeized court with the same 3.9, we play with the wide key, which means you're a bit further away from the basket than what I'd gather like younger.
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[SPEAKER_00]: athletes play with and the same like half court and everything like it's the same we rent regular college gyms to play and and can you tell us about the point system each player gets a point a point level based on their function so people like me with who are paraplegics I can't use my legs at all and I only some of my add muscles work so I'm a 1.0
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[SPEAKER_00]: people with higher functional levels, so like a below the knee ampute, would be a 4 or a 4.5.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you can only have a limit of 14 points on the court playing at once for each team.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a lot of quick math that is done.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So you could stack like like three high point people or you could have like 10 low point people?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, only five people are allowed on the same thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like you end up developing lineups based on the role that your players tend to play and their point value.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Is the game itself any different we still have the same double dribble violation we don't really call it that but you can touch the ball twice before you have to do something with it, which is either past shoot or dribble and someone who plays regular stand up basketball might have trouble at first.
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[SPEAKER_00]: because learning to dribble is like one of the fundamental skills and we play in wheelchairs, they have a lot of camber.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The wheels are very severely tilted for maneuverability and so it's when you're new it's easy to accidentally bounce it off your wheel and then it shoots off toward the sidelines and
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[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, you dribbling is not done a lot except to carry the ball to the half court line.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Passing and shooting are really all you can do because people, they're all the same height as you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They can steal it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think people are often surprised by how physical wheelchair basketball is.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What does contact look like in a game and and also what crosses the line?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It is a very physical, very fast game, and we play in sport wheelchairs that are 25 pounds.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's no jumping in this game, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, contact is the collision of the chairs with each other, and a violation is, for example, common one, when you
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[SPEAKER_00]: aren't far enough ahead of another player when you are kind of trying to steal the ball from them or wheeling quickly alongside.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't have position and so that would be a violation for the foul, like basically cutting into their lane.
04:34.656 --> 04:46.167
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of unallowed contact with hands on arms while someone's shooting because nobody's jumping so that's there's no way to get a
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we're just kind of to fit in all this.
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[SPEAKER_02]: How dominant are we in the sport?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, when I was playing from 1997 to about 2008, we had what was called the winningest team in history, and that was the Women's Paralympic team in Canada.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I got the extreme fortune to learn alongside the winningest coach of the winningest team and most of the players.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that is the only reason why I was ever on the national pool, because I had that kind of coaching and those people around me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That team won, I believe, four gold medals in a row.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think they were like 16 and a no in international play.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Why?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Why do you think Canada is so strong?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's because we play with able-bodied athletes in international play like Paralympic and Paralympic qualifiers, non-disabled athletes are not allowed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be classifiable, you know, that gets a little complicated because sometimes people want to play so much, they make themselves classifiable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Those able-bodied non-disabled athletes in domestic wheelchair basketball in Canada, they can play all the way up to our national championships, and they force us to be better.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Even when we don't have enough people to play in any one metro area other than Toronto without them, that I think makes us faster and stronger.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is it an expensive sport to play?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, when hockey's your national sport, everything's relative, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the chairs are quite expensive, and until you are an elite player, you rely on your club team who usually has a set of chairs, and they don't belong to you, you can't do anything drastic to them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the chairs themselves are trying to think of what they would be now $78,000.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The types of wheels you need, they're almost a consumable item because they get bent.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, they don't last for more than like two or three seasons.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, I would say it is expensive, especially for a lot of disabled people who are have a much higher unemployment rate.
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[SPEAKER_02]: the part in the story about a coach sending in the fictional jocelyn as a bruiser that was actually you like whenever I brag about you when real chair basketball comes up I always say she was like the Todd Bertousie of wheelchair basketball which no one understands the reference I think I even put it in
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[SPEAKER_02]: in the episode this time.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Tabor Tuzi was a bruiser for, I think the canucks.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And he was like, he didn't score well, he didn't skate well.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The only thing he could really do is just go up and beat people up on the guys.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it was that unfair for me to call you that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You might laugh at to see me now because I am the shortest person on the team as partly due to my disability, but I was always fast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I started using a wheelchair at nine years old, so my body and my sort of musculature get adopted to that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I've always been really fast, but I suspect that was what I was asked to do partly because I was not a great shooter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I would get in there and I loved the contact and I was pretty strong for my size and so lower point players are often going to have several fouls left to be taken because we aren't getting hit as much as the higher point players.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so near the end of the game, coach would be like
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's just a force to turn over if we're behind and it's coming near the end of the game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Every foul stops the game and forces the other team to inbound the ball from the end or the sideline.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and if you are full court pressing that, then you are trying to get that ball back from them so that you can score another few points.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's, I don't know where it lies in the scheme of like modern wheelchair basketball, but that was certainly something I was asked to do more than once.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Was it hard to leave the sport behind?
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[SPEAKER_00]: oh my god, so hard.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I had to choose between finishing my degree and like moving on with my life and not being constantly like student level poor or continuing like redoubling my efforts to get onto the national team because I I was left behind for the Paralympics once and for a qualifying
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[SPEAKER_00]: I took a look around me from my colleagues who were competing for the same role.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And when you're a point value, you're competing as people of that functional level really.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I looked around and I saw amazing women with like a
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[SPEAKER_00]: far better skills than mine had just popped up around the country and I was like I can't compete against that unless I make a very big change in my life and I have to tell you I hated everything about it except playing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hated going to the gym.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I was and I at that point I finally enjoyed university and I just was like I wanted to be go into medicine and I was like that's that's where I need to put my efforts and I don't regret it but it was hard I really loved the sport it was really distracting we had to travel a ton to compete and I just couldn't focus.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Did playing for Canada shape how you saw your own
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[SPEAKER_00]: Playing for Canada, I mean, playing against other countries, showed me that not every country saw disabled people in the same way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think some of the folks we would play against, and this is a sport dominated by people with hand and arm function, at least.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We would see teams of people from countries that are westernized, you know, advanced countries and they would have caregivers that pushed them on the court and liked it everything for them, which is kind of a foreign concept to us.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And on the other side, we would see our American
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[SPEAKER_00]: technology ever because they have competitive brands for wheelchairs and such making big levels of money and so there's a little bit of that Canada but not nearly as much because there's not paying people in Canada for that kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so yeah, you do learn and then you, I learned that in Europe, they have a semi-pro wheelchair basketball league where a lot of my, um, teammates would go to Europe for the summer and play wheelchair basketball in the league and earn some money in steep part of Europe.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that also shows you a little something like that culture has moved on and seen wheels or sport as something worth watching for entertainment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Before let you go, what is murder ball?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is that just a different way of saying wheelchair basketball?
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Murder Ball is the original name given to what's called wheelchair rugby now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What's called quad rugby when the movie Murder Ball was made.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually work with the guy who invented it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And quad rugby is a very cool sport very quickly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's they have crazy tank style wheelchairs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a sport meant for people with upper limb impairments, like quadriplegia or amputations to play indoors on a, and they play with a volleyball on a basketball court, and it's a very horizontal game, but it's very fast and it's loud, it's all the crashing chairs into each other, and it's kind of amazing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: that I think was the most horrifying part of seeing wheelchair basketball when we first started dating, and maybe it's because society or me, you see people in a wheelchair and you think you've got to take more care of them, or precious isn't the right word, but they have a certain level of
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[SPEAKER_02]: vulnerability.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so you want to make sure and then I, you know, I saw wheelchair basketball players smashing into each other and crashing and videos of you flipping over in your chair and and it kind of shocked me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I got a chance, I think, three times, to play at the half time of the Grizzlies games, which is the short-lived NBA franchise in Vancouver, and we learned that they don't want to see basketball, the way we play it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They want to see excitement and entertainment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so we kind of practice a few things to just show off some of the more fun aspects.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It is real, it just doesn't happen in the average five minute.
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[SPEAKER_00]: game.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, so there was more crashing and more.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we just allowed ourselves to have more fun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so one year when the national team was all in Vancouver playing, or like doing our national camp, we got the chance to play at halftime, and I was able to go with them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's one player from Quebec called Nuth.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Guess what her number is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, who had a Hemie Bellback to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So she is one leg and was missing part of her pelvis and so she's so narrow and speedy like amazing amazing athlete who played for like 20 years and she
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[SPEAKER_00]: catches the ball.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She's super fast and maneuverable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then someone goes out to pick her to like keep her out of play.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And she flips right over the, like their lap.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Does a summer salt catches the ball and flips back up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the entire place was like, oh, oh, and no.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in
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[SPEAKER_00]: they have been cured of their notion that all people with disabilities are vulnerable and need protection.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I think there's reason to protect each other, but that was a fun thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There is a lot about wheelchair sport that gives us a chance to show off our strengths and resilience and competitive spirit on a playing field that's not just about like how inspiring we are.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for letting me, uh, interrupt your day.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I've got coffee, so I didn't matter.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Just one muffin is a former national team player and coach for wheelchair basketball.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Today she is associate director of spinal cord injury B.C.
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[SPEAKER_02]: She lives with me in the NIMO on Vancouver Island.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Next week, the shocking season finale of Mirror Falls.
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[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
00:18.391 --> 00:21.394
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to another bonus episode of Mirror Falls.
00:21.814 --> 00:25.698
[SPEAKER_02]: If you haven't listened to this week's episode about the farmers market, you should do that now.
00:25.738 --> 00:36.548
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have listened and you're worried this series just took a hard left into something dark, do not worry, this is still a story about decent people with complicated pasts.
00:36.828 --> 00:46.677
[SPEAKER_02]: This takes me rise a little as you learn more about the town secrets, but I promise the heart will always stay where it's been gentle, funny, and Canadian.
00:46.657 --> 00:50.904
[SPEAKER_02]: In the last episode, we met Jocelyn, who runs the dark side of the moon coffee shop.
00:51.465 --> 00:54.269
[SPEAKER_02]: The character is a former wheelchair basketball player.
00:54.890 --> 00:59.577
[SPEAKER_02]: She is based partly on my next guest, who was on Canada's national team for the sport.
00:59.978 --> 01:01.180
[SPEAKER_02]: Her name is Jocelyn Mathen.
01:01.481 --> 01:07.069
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, she's my wife, and she joins me now from our office, which is upstairs and past the guest bedroom.
01:07.290 --> 01:07.610
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello!
01:07.650 --> 01:09.373
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi!
01:09.353 --> 01:22.182
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to talk about Canada's contributions to wheelchair basketball because that's a huge part of the story, but can you walk us through how it's played is it the same size court the same basket and all that stuff?
01:22.398 --> 01:45.132
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, we play on, I should clarify, I don't play anymore, but the sport is played on a regulation collegeized court with the same 3.9, we play with the wide key, which means you're a bit further away from the basket than what I'd gather like younger.
01:45.112 --> 02:13.043
[SPEAKER_00]: athletes play with and the same like half court and everything like it's the same we rent regular college gyms to play and and can you tell us about the point system each player gets a point a point level based on their function so people like me with who are paraplegics I can't use my legs at all and I only some of my add muscles work so I'm a 1.0
02:13.023 --> 02:19.573
[SPEAKER_00]: people with higher functional levels, so like a below the knee ampute, would be a 4 or a 4.5.
02:21.156 --> 02:28.407
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can only have a limit of 14 points on the court playing at once for each team.
02:28.427 --> 02:31.572
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a lot of quick math that is done.
02:31.552 --> 02:39.009
[SPEAKER_02]: So you could stack like like three high point people or you could have like 10 low point people?
02:39.069 --> 02:42.476
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, only five people are allowed on the same thing.
02:42.497 --> 02:42.697
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
02:42.717 --> 02:42.937
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
02:42.958 --> 02:50.775
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you end up developing lineups based on the role that your players tend to play and their point value.
02:51.295 --> 03:11.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the game itself any different we still have the same double dribble violation we don't really call it that but you can touch the ball twice before you have to do something with it, which is either past shoot or dribble and someone who plays regular stand up basketball might have trouble at first.
03:11.579 --> 03:19.531
[SPEAKER_00]: because learning to dribble is like one of the fundamental skills and we play in wheelchairs, they have a lot of camber.
03:19.611 --> 03:31.630
[SPEAKER_00]: The wheels are very severely tilted for maneuverability and so it's when you're new it's easy to accidentally bounce it off your wheel and then it shoots off toward the sidelines and
03:31.610 --> 03:37.820
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, you dribbling is not done a lot except to carry the ball to the half court line.
03:38.902 --> 03:44.391
[SPEAKER_00]: Passing and shooting are really all you can do because people, they're all the same height as you.
03:44.411 --> 03:45.112
[SPEAKER_00]: They can steal it.
03:46.875 --> 03:52.725
[SPEAKER_02]: I think people are often surprised by how physical wheelchair basketball is.
03:52.865 --> 03:57.533
[SPEAKER_02]: What does contact look like in a game and and also what crosses the line?
03:57.631 --> 04:07.084
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a very physical, very fast game, and we play in sport wheelchairs that are 25 pounds.
04:07.625 --> 04:09.307
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no jumping in this game, right?
04:09.788 --> 04:18.660
[SPEAKER_00]: So, contact is the collision of the chairs with each other, and a violation is, for example, common one, when you
04:18.640 --> 04:26.147
[SPEAKER_00]: aren't far enough ahead of another player when you are kind of trying to steal the ball from them or wheeling quickly alongside.
04:26.708 --> 04:34.015
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't have position and so that would be a violation for the foul, like basically cutting into their lane.
04:34.656 --> 04:46.167
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of unallowed contact with hands on arms while someone's shooting because nobody's jumping so that's there's no way to get a
04:46.147 --> 04:47.949
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we're just kind of to fit in all this.
04:48.009 --> 04:49.330
[SPEAKER_02]: How dominant are we in the sport?
04:49.610 --> 05:01.462
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, when I was playing from 1997 to about 2008, we had what was called the winningest team in history, and that was the Women's Paralympic team in Canada.
05:01.762 --> 05:11.952
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got the extreme fortune to learn alongside the winningest coach of the winningest team and most of the players.
05:11.932 --> 05:21.065
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that is the only reason why I was ever on the national pool, because I had that kind of coaching and those people around me.
05:21.085 --> 05:27.453
[SPEAKER_00]: That team won, I believe, four gold medals in a row.
05:27.473 --> 05:30.838
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they were like 16 and a no in international play.
05:31.359 --> 05:31.539
[SPEAKER_02]: Why?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Why do you think Canada is so strong?
05:33.245 --> 05:44.168
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's because we play with able-bodied athletes in international play like Paralympic and Paralympic qualifiers, non-disabled athletes are not allowed.
05:44.609 --> 05:52.806
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be classifiable, you know, that gets a little complicated because sometimes people want to play so much, they make themselves classifiable.
05:52.786 --> 06:03.819
[SPEAKER_00]: Those able-bodied non-disabled athletes in domestic wheelchair basketball in Canada, they can play all the way up to our national championships, and they force us to be better.
06:04.200 --> 06:13.731
[SPEAKER_00]: Even when we don't have enough people to play in any one metro area other than Toronto without them, that I think makes us faster and stronger.
06:13.711 --> 06:15.714
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it an expensive sport to play?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, when hockey's your national sport, everything's relative, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the chairs are quite expensive, and until you are an elite player, you rely on your club team who usually has a set of chairs, and they don't belong to you, you can't do anything drastic to them.
06:35.328 --> 06:40.337
[SPEAKER_00]: But the chairs themselves are trying to think of what they would be now $78,000.
06:41.399 --> 06:46.188
[SPEAKER_00]: The types of wheels you need, they're almost a consumable item because they get bent.
06:46.349 --> 06:50.116
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, they don't last for more than like two or three seasons.
06:50.296 --> 06:58.872
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I would say it is expensive, especially for a lot of disabled people who are have a much higher unemployment rate.
06:59.763 --> 07:17.029
[SPEAKER_02]: the part in the story about a coach sending in the fictional jocelyn as a bruiser that was actually you like whenever I brag about you when real chair basketball comes up I always say she was like the Todd Bertousie of wheelchair basketball which no one understands the reference I think I even put it in
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[SPEAKER_02]: in the episode this time.
07:18.933 --> 07:21.959
[SPEAKER_02]: Tabor Tuzi was a bruiser for, I think the canucks.
07:21.979 --> 07:22.320
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
07:22.340 --> 07:22.881
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
07:23.041 --> 07:26.307
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was like, he didn't score well, he didn't skate well.
07:26.608 --> 07:30.857
[SPEAKER_02]: The only thing he could really do is just go up and beat people up on the guys.
07:31.919 --> 07:34.123
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it was that unfair for me to call you that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You might laugh at to see me now because I am the shortest person on the team as partly due to my disability, but I was always fast.
07:42.695 --> 07:49.786
[SPEAKER_00]: I started using a wheelchair at nine years old, so my body and my sort of musculature get adopted to that.
07:50.507 --> 07:59.740
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've always been really fast, but I suspect that was what I was asked to do partly because I was not a great shooter.
07:59.720 --> 08:17.658
[SPEAKER_00]: I would get in there and I loved the contact and I was pretty strong for my size and so lower point players are often going to have several fouls left to be taken because we aren't getting hit as much as the higher point players.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so near the end of the game, coach would be like
08:29.251 --> 08:34.402
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's just a force to turn over if we're behind and it's coming near the end of the game.
08:34.442 --> 08:44.442
[SPEAKER_00]: Every foul stops the game and forces the other team to inbound the ball from the end or the sideline.
08:44.422 --> 08:52.079
[SPEAKER_00]: and if you are full court pressing that, then you are trying to get that ball back from them so that you can score another few points.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's, I don't know where it lies in the scheme of like modern wheelchair basketball, but that was certainly something I was asked to do more than once.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Was it hard to leave the sport behind?
09:04.098 --> 09:05.340
[SPEAKER_00]: oh my god, so hard.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I had to choose between finishing my degree and like moving on with my life and not being constantly like student level poor or continuing like redoubling my efforts to get onto the national team because I I was left behind for the Paralympics once and for a qualifying
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[SPEAKER_00]: I took a look around me from my colleagues who were competing for the same role.
09:33.841 --> 09:40.072
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you're a point value, you're competing as people of that functional level really.
09:40.092 --> 09:44.500
[SPEAKER_00]: And I looked around and I saw amazing women with like a
09:44.480 --> 10:01.793
[SPEAKER_00]: far better skills than mine had just popped up around the country and I was like I can't compete against that unless I make a very big change in my life and I have to tell you I hated everything about it except playing.
10:01.813 --> 10:04.598
[SPEAKER_00]: I hated going to the gym.
10:05.152 --> 10:26.393
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was and I at that point I finally enjoyed university and I just was like I wanted to be go into medicine and I was like that's that's where I need to put my efforts and I don't regret it but it was hard I really loved the sport it was really distracting we had to travel a ton to compete and I just couldn't focus.
10:27.754 --> 10:31.598
[SPEAKER_01]: Did playing for Canada shape how you saw your own
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[SPEAKER_00]: Playing for Canada, I mean, playing against other countries, showed me that not every country saw disabled people in the same way.
10:41.367 --> 10:51.763
[SPEAKER_00]: I think some of the folks we would play against, and this is a sport dominated by people with hand and arm function, at least.
10:51.743 --> 11:08.525
[SPEAKER_00]: We would see teams of people from countries that are westernized, you know, advanced countries and they would have caregivers that pushed them on the court and liked it everything for them, which is kind of a foreign concept to us.
11:09.447 --> 11:18.679
[SPEAKER_00]: And on the other side, we would see our American
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[SPEAKER_00]: technology ever because they have competitive brands for wheelchairs and such making big levels of money and so there's a little bit of that Canada but not nearly as much because there's not paying people in Canada for that kind of thing.
11:39.905 --> 11:59.635
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so yeah, you do learn and then you, I learned that in Europe, they have a semi-pro wheelchair basketball league where a lot of my, um, teammates would go to Europe for the summer and play wheelchair basketball in the league and earn some money in steep part of Europe.
11:59.615 --> 12:09.331
[SPEAKER_00]: And that also shows you a little something like that culture has moved on and seen wheels or sport as something worth watching for entertainment.
12:09.872 --> 12:11.875
[SPEAKER_01]: Before let you go, what is murder ball?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is that just a different way of saying wheelchair basketball?
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no.
12:15.882 --> 12:20.709
[SPEAKER_00]: Murder Ball is the original name given to what's called wheelchair rugby now.
12:21.249 --> 12:24.233
[SPEAKER_00]: What's called quad rugby when the movie Murder Ball was made.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually work with the guy who invented it.
12:28.119 --> 12:32.124
[SPEAKER_00]: And quad rugby is a very cool sport very quickly.
12:32.164 --> 12:36.490
[SPEAKER_00]: It's they have crazy tank style wheelchairs.
12:36.470 --> 13:01.566
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a sport meant for people with upper limb impairments, like quadriplegia or amputations to play indoors on a, and they play with a volleyball on a basketball court, and it's a very horizontal game, but it's very fast and it's loud, it's all the crashing chairs into each other, and it's kind of amazing.
13:01.546 --> 13:21.293
[SPEAKER_02]: that I think was the most horrifying part of seeing wheelchair basketball when we first started dating, and maybe it's because society or me, you see people in a wheelchair and you think you've got to take more care of them, or precious isn't the right word, but they have a certain level of
13:21.273 --> 13:22.215
[SPEAKER_02]: vulnerability.
13:22.296 --> 13:22.857
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
13:22.897 --> 13:34.506
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you want to make sure and then I, you know, I saw wheelchair basketball players smashing into each other and crashing and videos of you flipping over in your chair and and it kind of shocked me.
13:34.705 --> 13:50.703
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a chance, I think, three times, to play at the half time of the Grizzlies games, which is the short-lived NBA franchise in Vancouver, and we learned that they don't want to see basketball, the way we play it.
13:51.204 --> 13:53.487
[SPEAKER_00]: They want to see excitement and entertainment.
13:53.607 --> 13:59.293
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we kind of practice a few things to just show off some of the more fun aspects.
13:59.473 --> 14:02.637
[SPEAKER_00]: It is real, it just doesn't happen in the average five minute.
14:02.617 --> 14:03.038
[SPEAKER_00]: game.
14:03.058 --> 14:04.661
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, so there was more crashing and more.
14:04.821 --> 14:07.125
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we just allowed ourselves to have more fun.
14:07.746 --> 14:20.669
[SPEAKER_00]: And so one year when the national team was all in Vancouver playing, or like doing our national camp, we got the chance to play at halftime, and I was able to go with them.
14:21.009 --> 14:25.958
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's one player from Quebec called Nuth.
14:25.938 --> 14:27.180
[SPEAKER_00]: Guess what her number is.
14:27.982 --> 14:30.046
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, who had a Hemie Bellback to me.
14:30.066 --> 14:42.951
[SPEAKER_00]: So she is one leg and was missing part of her pelvis and so she's so narrow and speedy like amazing amazing athlete who played for like 20 years and she
14:42.931 --> 14:43.752
[SPEAKER_00]: catches the ball.
14:43.772 --> 14:45.674
[SPEAKER_00]: She's super fast and maneuverable.
14:46.215 --> 14:50.079
[SPEAKER_00]: And then someone goes out to pick her to like keep her out of play.
14:50.580 --> 14:54.364
[SPEAKER_00]: And she flips right over the, like their lap.
14:54.885 --> 14:59.190
[SPEAKER_00]: Does a summer salt catches the ball and flips back up.
14:59.210 --> 15:06.118
[SPEAKER_00]: And the entire place was like, oh, oh, and no.
15:07.039 --> 15:10.423
[SPEAKER_00]: And in
15:10.403 --> 15:17.411
[SPEAKER_00]: they have been cured of their notion that all people with disabilities are vulnerable and need protection.
15:17.451 --> 15:23.559
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I think there's reason to protect each other, but that was a fun thing.
15:23.579 --> 15:36.394
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a lot about wheelchair sport that gives us a chance to show off our strengths and resilience and competitive spirit on a playing field that's not just about like how inspiring we are.
15:37.437 --> 15:39.640
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for letting me, uh, interrupt your day.
15:41.082 --> 15:42.744
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I've got coffee, so I didn't matter.
15:43.565 --> 15:47.530
[SPEAKER_02]: Just one muffin is a former national team player and coach for wheelchair basketball.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Today she is associate director of spinal cord injury B.C.
15:51.374 --> 15:55.480
[SPEAKER_02]: She lives with me in the NIMO on Vancouver Island.
15:56.140 --> 16:01.487
[SPEAKER_02]: Next week, the shocking season finale of Mirror Falls.