FOLLOWUP: Congratulations to NWBA women’s champions Milwaukee Lady Bucks

| West Seattle news | WS & Sports

(WSB photo: Milwaukee in green, Denver in white)

This weekend’s National Wheelchair Basketball Association women’s championship tournament at West Seattle High School ended with new champions – the Milwaukee Lady Bucks! In the finals at midday today, they beat last year’s champs, the Denver Lady Rolling Nuggets, 66-36. The game was streamed live; you can watch the playback on YouTube here.

As we reported on Friday and Saturday, eight teams competed, including the local Seattle Storm; Seattle Adaptive Sports co-hosted the tournament.

dsa March 21, 2016 (12:40 am)

Thanks for the video. I have a better understanding of how often they to dribble. The basket looks like it is the same 10 feet from the floor. That would be more difficult.

jissy March 21, 2016 (2:06 pm)

Thanks WSB for posting this information — I took my kids to a game on Saturday afternoon and they really enjoyed it as did I. I appreciate all of the community events and new experiences we get to have thanks to all the information you post, most of which I’d never know about.

DSA, one of the coaches was talking to some friends near us on Saturday during halftime and they asked about dribbling — he noted the rule is a player can do a maximum of 2 pushes of their wheels and then they must dribble.

jissy March 21, 2016 (2:09 pm)

One other comment – little confusing to me and I need to look it up as now I’m really curious….we saw 2 players after the game get up out of the chairs and just walk away, although I know you can never tell if anyone has a physical disability just by looking but my kids were rather confused by it.

WSB March 21, 2016 (2:18 pm)

Good question … at one point while we were covering it over the weekend, I was trying to find the rules, thinking those would be of interest to others who hadn’t watched this version of basketball before, but got sidetracked, as happens with way too many things … Anyway, I found this: http://www.disabledsportsusa.org/wheelchair-basketball/

From that:

Today, in order to be eligible to play wheelchair basketball within the NWBA a person must have a permanent lower extremity disability that precludes then from playing competitive stand up basketball. In addition to spinal cord injury (SCI), many types of disabilities qualify a person to play wheelchair basketball. Spina bifida, cerebral palsy, post polio syndrome, lower extremity amputation, leg length discrepancy, and permanent joint disorders are just a few of the disabilities that would qualify a person to play wheelchair basketball.

One of the misconceptions of wheelchair basketball is that you must use a chair for everyday mobility in order to play the sport. In fact, many wheelchair basketball athletes get up out of their chair at the end of a game or practice and walk around for the rest of the day.