Vets’ Wheelchair Hoops Team Hits Court

“Elbows out wide, snap your wrists!” Paul Weiland called to his fellow disabled veterans amid the thud of basketballs bouncing off the hardwood floorboards under the bright lights of Southern Connecticut State University’s (SCSU) Pelz Gymnasium. 

It was a passing drill at a Thursday night practice for a newly formed (and yet unnamed) all-veterans wheelchair basketball team, the first of its kind in the Northeast.

Weiland, 40, a program instructor for the school’s Institute of Adaptive Sports and Recreation, was leading it with gusto.

“Yes,” he shouted, as Dennis Bardelli, a Marine Corps veteran, expertly received a ball before delivering a dime to another player tearing down the court.

It all started in September at an all-veterans basketball clinic at SCSU, Weiland said. 

The National Wheelchair Basketball Association, which was co-hosting the event, asked if SCSU would be willing to house a team for veterans. The team would not require players to be wheelchair-bound but would include veterans with conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

Weiland approached Bardelli, who was participating in the clinic, and asked if he would be interested in joining the team. Bardelli lives in Maryland. 

“Dennis told me he would travel five and a half hours for a practice, and that’s when I said: ​‘Well, thank you for your service, sir, and by heck or high water, I will get you a team,’” he said. 

The plan is for the team to practice weekly at Pelz Gymnasium, with games in January and February, in preparation for a national tournament in April. The practices will be held in conjunction with the Connecticut Spokebenders, a team in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. 

Weiland said he was born three months premature and with cerebral palsy. He learned to walk at five years old, enduring 25 reconstructive surgeries, and played four years of high school football. ​“I was a 160-pound nose guard,” he said. 

He didn’t know adaptive sports existed until he tried to walk onto the football team at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, MN. 

“Two captains of the wheelchair basketball team physically cornered me in a hallway and told me I was playing the wrong sport, and as a result I became a five-year letter winner and four-year captain,” he said. 

“Growing up, people didn’t think that I was eligible or that I wanted to play,” he said. ​“Plus awareness of adaptive sports wasn’t there, still isn’t.”

Hence, his mission, to spread awareness of adaptive sports, which he’s sought to realize through coaching wheelchair basketball at the high school and college levels, and as part of the USA Paralympics Wheelchair Basketball Selection Committee. 

The all-veterans team ​“will give players a sense of camaraderie that they experienced in the military and may have lost since then,” Weiland said. 

That includes Bardelli, who said he got out of the Marine Corps in 2002. He lost his leg to an infection in March 2020. 

“Growing up, I played a bunch of sports, but never really with a passion,” he said. 

That’s changed, it seems, with the help of the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

“They’re a fantastic sponsor,” Bardelli said. At a three-day immersive wheelchair basketball camp in Alabama this past summer, for example, ​“they took care of everything, from the flight, the ride from the airport, to our dorms, to getting us to where we need to go, and that allowed me to do 54 miles in my chair.”

At the basketball camps, he said, ​“you get really close to people. It’s the camaraderie of coming together with similar abilities and disabilities, and we all take care of each other.”

The bond ​“is similar to the military,” he said. ​“We all have to deal with the VA, and other organizations, so we all go out of our way to have each other’s backs.” 

That’s why, he said, ​“I flew in from Maryland this morning for the practice, and I’ll fly home tomorrow morning. It’s that important for me to be here.” 

For Sandra Bulmer, dean of SCSU’s College of Health and Human Services, Thursday night’s practice, and the all-veterans team itself, was symbolic of the university’s effort to become more diverse and inclusive. 

“For people with physical and emotional disabilities, there’s really been a lack of programming and there are a lot of college students out there that would really thrive if they had more options,” she said, as Weiland’s whistle shrilled.

That might describe Matthew Reid, a sophomore at Cheshire High School, who was practicing with the Connecticut Spokebenders.

Reid, a bilateral below-the-knee amputee, said he discovered wheelchair basketball three years ago through Camp No Limits, a national nonprofit organization that sponsors camps for children with limb loss in different states.

“The hardest part was dribbling and wheeling,” he said. ​“That requires some serious coordination because you’re afraid to fall.” All in all, he said, ​“I love the challenge of it, and working as a team to accomplish something greater and also seeing my progress, how far I’ve come and how far I have to go.”

Reid said he doesn’t watch the NBA or college basketball. ​“Wheelchair basketball is a way better game,” he said. 

He said he focuses on top wheelchair basketball players like Patrick Anderson, Steve Serio, and Matt Scott, all of whom he’s met.

“I look up to all of them because that’s where I want to be when I see my future self,” he said.

On the sidelines was Fred Phillips, the uncle of John Paul Jones, who was lining up for a lay-up drill. 

Phillips, the founder of the grassroots organization Men Standing Up Against Violence, said Jones was a basketball standout at Prince Tech in Hartford. In May 2018, Phillips said, ​“he took four or five bullets in broad daylight on Harold Street in Hartford and now he’s a paraplegic.”

Since then, ​“he’s been great at not letting that incident stop him from living,” Phillips said.

Wheelchair basketball ​“is helping him, I think it’s helping all of them,” Phillips said. ​“When you’re confined to a wheelchair, you don’t want to think about all the things you can’t do, you want to think about all the things you can do.” 

Jones agreed. ​“As a paraplegic, we have to find a hobby,” he said, as he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. ​“It just so happened that my physical therapist mentioned basketball as an activity, and I texted Paul two or three months ago, and that was it.”

The first hurdle, he said, ​“is adapting to the chair. The second hurdle is recognizing that playing basketball in a wheelchair is different from playing when you’re a walker.” To take one example, ​“if you shoot from the side, and not square to the basket, you get a more strengthened shot.”

“New rules, same game,” he said. 

By then, the players were gathering in the center of the court. After asking each what they had learned, Weiland led the group in a chant.

“Teamwork on three. One, two, three: Teamwork!” he called out.

“Teamwork!” they called back in unison, the word echoing through the gymnasium.