Grassroots Games 2016: Wheelchair basketball
The Paralympics is under way in Brazil, and the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) is focusing on the sports that you will see, hear or read about over the next two weeks.
With 22 different disciplines on show in Rio 2016, EFDS takes a look at grassroots participation back here in Britain.
Today it’s Wheelchair Basketball, with Anna Jackson telling us about becoming a coach after a glittering playing career.
I coach at the Cheshire Phoenix basketball club.
We train as a club once a week, which for me involved both coaching and practicing my sport. Away from basketball I enjoy swimming and going to the gym.
Currently I’m trying to build my fitness back up.
I played for Great Britain for 10 years and retired in 2008, and exercise had been such a big part of my life for that period of time. After that I needed a bit of a break, really, but now I’m seizing every opportunity I get to be back out on a basketball court and start playing again.
All I wanted to do when I was younger was sport. That was my life.
My mother was a PE teacher and I lived by a tennis court, and sport was just ingrained within me.
Now I play all my sport from my wheelchair.
Getting in a chair to play made me realise that wheels could give me back my freedom and my independence. Suddenly life was amazing again. Life became so much better once I discovered what a set of wheels could do for me.
Getting my coaching qualifications for wheelchair basketball was very important.
To be able to give back to the sport was one thing, but also to be able to inspire other people to do what I’ve done. It’s certainly more than wheelchair basketball coaching – it’s about a much bigger picture.
Life can deal you some naff cards at times.
But the beauty of this sport and what we’re doing is that you’re part of something and it doesn’t matter what’s wrong with you or what doesn’t work. It’s about sport and that positive environment.
