A Bigger Reason to Push
What if the one thing “keeping you stuck” gave you a greater reason to keep on pushing?
As I journeyed into wheelchair basketball, I quickly developed a deep love for the sport. Training multiple times a week, travelling a lot to do so and making sure that when I arrive at training, I always bring my all.
I thankfully started coaching kids basketball too - both able-bodied and also young wheelchair players as well.
Wheelchair basketball was and still is a significant passion of mine.
Being so passionate about it, I wanted to share the experience with others as well so I decided to start hosting Wheelchair Basketball “Roadshows” to different schools and communities.
Personally, having a background in working with high school students, I felt like I would gravitate towards them a little more than primary school kids.
Though in the Term 3 holidays of 2022, I hosted a primary school OOSH roadshow that opened my eyes.
That day I was at 2 different primary schools in Sydney’s East.
The first school had quite a lot of students and we ended up dividing them into 9 different teams.
It was great though some teams had some troubles when they got into their chairs. Sometimes only 3 or 4 chairs would be filled in their team of 5 - Someone has clearly not wanted to join in.
I always went over and approached those that didn’t want to play and would offer the opportunity to sit in the chairs and play with their team for 30 seconds. And if they didn’t like it, they could walk away.
The few times I had to do that in the first session, those students were begging to play again and again, it was great.
Then come the second session and this time we had 6 different teams.
The first two games were great and the kids were loving it.
Come the third game where the last 2 teams were playing against each other, I instructed everyone to switch over for the final team before everyone got to play again.
As everyone ran to and sat in their wheelchairs, I was approached from behind by a student and one of the OOSH supporters.
The supporter says, “Matt do you think Eli is going to be able to play?”
The kid, disheartened, looks down and shares, “I broke my right arm last week.”
I felt bad for Eli and didn’t want him to let it get to him. I intuitively responded saying, “Of course, let’s get you into one of the chairs, we’ll make it work!”
Eli then became excited to hear that he could have the opportunity to play with everyone.
I didn’t want to keep everyone waiting so I got the game started. Though Eli quickly found himself in trouble, he was going in circles.
I went over to him and he said, “Matt I’m right handed, it’s hard to push with my left hand only.”
Fair enough, I could imagine it’d be hard with either hand so I asked if it was okay to push him around a little and he wanted me to do so.
At first, I pushed him around quite a bit that first game and he was loving it. His team gave him a shot also by passing him the ball and I made sure he still bounced the ball every now and then.
I didn’t push the entire game but I did for quite a lot of the first one.
Then came the second game Eli was in and I pushed him around still, only this time I intentionally pushed him less to see how he would react in his own space.
By himself, he did his absolute best to manoeuvre his chair with his left hand only.
Then by Eli’s third game, I would push him even less and by that stage, he loved playing in the chair and figured out a way to use his hips as well as a push, slight pull method to go up and down the court!
Eli had to work 10x harder than anyone else to push his chair though he did his absolute best to get himself playing.
His team would pass him the ball and he got good at getting in people’s way!
Eli’s broken arm gave him an even bigger reason to give his all in that wheelchair because at that moment, what seemed to be “holding him back”, was actually his excuse to push even harder.
It was no coincidence that Eli walked away from that roadshow with the biggest smile of the group.
He walked away stronger that afternoon.
