As written by: Ben Smith
As posted at: www.jg.net Nov. 9th, 2008
Emily Shryock chases a loose ball in rugby practice. Quad rugby is one of the newer sports at Turnstone.
The latest trophy sits on the receptionist’s desk, adorned with a handwritten note: “Bandits won this!” And if it had elbows, they would be up.
How else, if not with a tiny, well-placed elbow, will this latest treasure clear a space in the laden trophy case at Turnstone Center for Children and Adults with Disabilities?
Tucked away down a back hall here are basketball trophies and power soccer trophies and more basketball trophies, one gleaming inscribed surface melding into the next. Beribboned medals of all shades spill across the shelves. There are team photos and handsome wood plaques and more team photos.
It’s the most visible evidence of what Kevin Hughes is talking about this November night in the Turnstone gym, where the Fort Wayne Bandits adult wheelchair basketball team has turned over the practice floor to the quad rugby players.
“When I was first getting involved with adaptive sports, the only real option was basketball.,” says Hughes, as the quad rugby players gleefully bash into one another. “I kind of got that going, and that was a lot of fun. But to see the last five years or so, to see it expand to power soccer, quad rugby, tennis, sled hockey …
“It’s good. It’s good because you can’t always assume everybody’s just gonna love one sport. You can’t lock everyone into that one category.”
No problem these days. There’s basketball, first off; the nationally ranked prep Turnstone Flyers, whom Hughes coaches, and the varsity Flyers, and the two-time Mid-American Wheelchair Basketball Conference champion Bandits. There’s the Fantastic Flyers power soccer team, the defending national Division II champions. There’s quad rugby. There’s tennis. There’s Gold Ball, which is soccer for the blind that uses a beeper ball.
There’s even sled hockey, the newest Turnstone adaptive sport, which started last year thanks to the cooperative efforts of Turnstone, Parks and Recreation and the MAC ice facility at McMillen Park. In February, over Valentine’s Day weekend, Turnstone will play host to its first tournament, the Bob Chase Frostbite Sled Hockey Championships.
“It’s still in the building stages,” says Hughes, noting there are only between 7 and 11 players right now. “We’ll get there, little by little.”
Larry Smith knows all about little by little. Forty-eight years old, he’s been in a chair since he was 18, long enough to remember a time when not even wheelchair basketball was available locally. So he took up wheelchair marathoning to stay active … after which he moved to California … after which he met a Vietnam vet from South Whitley named Tim Davis, who introduced him to wheelchair hoops … after which he got involved in wheelchair tennis and skiing, too.
Now he plays basketball for the Bandits, undefeated at 7-0 this season and annually one of the top adult teams in the nation. They’re rated second nationally at the moment.
“Yeah, we’ve become a pretty darn good ballclub over the years,” Smith says, as longtime teammate Dan Jacquay, 56, nods in agreement. “We love it, man. It’s a blast. It’s a great way to get rid of your aggressions and work up a sweat.
“Me, I always liked playing basketball as a ‘wholly’ (aka, able-bodied person). The competition, that’s the key, you know. We like going out and kicking people’s butts just like we did when we were young. That’s the best part of it.”
The adult game is played by college rules, with a 35-second shot clock. It is, Smith says, “fast and physical and you beat on each other.” And it isn’t age-specific; the Bandits’ roster includes the Smiths and the Jacquays to players such as Nate Silvers, who’s 23.
“When I first started, there weren’t as many sports around here,” Silver says. “We’d see rugby on the road and stuff when we’d go to tournaments. But now there’s a lot more of them out there than there used to be even two years ago.”
Better add on to that trophy case.
