TarWheels offer disabled a chance to compete

The usual sounds were there.

The rubber ball bouncing against the hardwood, the referee's whistle sounding a foul and the buzzer echoing throughout the gymnasium.

To the casual observer passing by, it sounded like any other basketball game, except there was not the familiar squeak of shoes running up and down the court. In its place was the clank of metal wheels grinding against each other and the thud of player and chair hitting the court after a foul.

It is called wheelchair basketball, an adaptive sport for disabled people, an it is not unlike any other game of basketball, the players just go about it a different way, said Donnie Langford, who has played the game for over 30 years.

"After people watch for a while, they don't see the chairs anymore, they see a game," Langford said. "We just can't run up and down the floor is the only difference."

After playing for teams in Charlotte for several years, Langford started the Carolina TarWheels in Cabarrus County.

They practice and play their games at Concord Middle School. Over the weekend, the year-old team hosted it first tournament at the middle school, playing teams from Virginia Beach, Charleston, Richmond and Magee, Pa.

Langford, who lives in Mount Pleasant, said he started the non-profit organization to give disabled people in the area an outlet to be active and learn there is life after an accident. He also wanted a shorter drive to games for himself.

The game has helped Langford cope with his own injury that confined him to a chair 30 years ago when he was in an accident involving a hit-and-run driver.

At the time, his doctor told him he would never walk again, a challenge he has since overcome but still uses the chair on a regular basis.

Depression set in after his accident and his wife, Janet, pushed him to move on and even tricked him into attending a wheelchair basketball game after he refused to go at first.

"I've got a real strong wife," Langford said. "She kicked me in the butt and said 'you can get over this.'"

There is a diversity of circumstances among the rest of the team and wheelchair basketball is their common ground.
Doctors told David Hix his physical lifestyle was in his past after a car struck him while he tried to break up a mugging in 2007. The Concord resident was working as a bouncer in Charlotte at the time and grew up playing football.

Hix said he kept looking for something to get him going until he came across wheelchair basketball. After practicing with the TarWheels a few times, he was hooked. Now he spends his free time banging chairs on the court and fighting for rebounds.

"The fact that we're all injured is the commonality that brings us together and gives us the opportunity to play," said David Hix, who took up the sport last year.

Langford said most people, able and disabled, are surprised when they first experience a game.

"They think the final score is going to be 8 –10 in an over time," Langford said. "But it's so far from that."

He added that it is nothing for a player to get clipped and roll three or four times before climbing back the chair to continue the game.

If there wasn't a wheelchair team around, Richard Travis said he is not sure what he would be doing. He has too much energy to sit around.

"It's not taken lighthearted out there, we get out there and we push and play hard," he said. "I don't let up on myself and I don't let up on anyone else either."

Travis, who is originally from Asheville and moved to Charlotte to attend school at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has limited function in his legs due to a spinal cord tumor he's had since birth. He started using a chair in high school when walking became more and more difficult for him.

He took up the game after trying out other adaptive sports like rugby.

While the TarWheels are a member of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association, the team is not affiliated with any conference and they must travel to tournaments or host their own in order to play.

Wheelchair basketball uses the same rule structure as NCAA basketball, playing two twenty-minute halves.

A few rules are altered, however. While there is no such thing as double dribble in wheelchair basketball, there is traveling. Players get two pushes on their wheels before having to dribble again.

The name Carolina TarWheels is nothing new. Langford said various teams have used it across the state for over 50 years.

Langford adopted the name for his non-profit organization when he started it a year ago.

Now he plans to grow and expand it beyond basketball to offer other adaptive sports options like track, golf and softball for the Cabarrus County area.

"There could be Olympic stars out there right now that are just sitting at home," Langford said.