Wheelchair Sports
In 1966 shortly after moving to the Dallas area I was rolling across a large parking lot when a car pulled up beside me. In that car was Donnie Rouse who was to become my best friend until his death many years later. He said “do you bowl?”. I just looked at him like he was from outer space. He said “a few of us bowl at Bronco Bowl…Wednesdays at 7:00″…and drove away. I got there the next Wednesday around 6:30.
There I met several guys with a wide range of handicaps. Not having ever been around people like myself (not many running around small West Texas towns) I learned a lot that night. And not just about bowling. Quads, Paras, AK and BK Amps and some of the greatest responses to the standard question “how did you get hurt?”. My favorite was the guy who had an injury similar to mine who was military. He was throwing ammo out of a helicopter in Nam when the tail rotor was shot out causing the copter to rotate…throwing him out…landing on top of a case of the ammo…breaking his back. When the smoke cleared the copter was sitting over him the skid barely missing him. Winner Winner.
Compare that to the guy who was adjusting the TV antenna for his dad and fell from the roof. My baseball trip car wreak ranked in the lower middle of the pack.
Over the next 5 years I bowled in the wheelchair league and an Up & Down league. Two person teams consisting of a handicapped bowler and a “normal” bowler. My partner and I worked around each other and named our team “The Half Fast Two”. Normally took people a couple of seconds when they read it on the screen. I carried around a 140 average, never getting much better the whole time. In 1969 I won the handicapped division of the Texas State Wheelchair Bowling championship. I bowled in the Scratch final against my good buddy Donnie Rouse.
In the late 60s a group of disabled vets reached out to Donnie and I about playing some basketball. There was no organized sports other than bowling in the southwest. We collected about 10 of us and contracted with a Dallas Rec Center in Oak Cliff for a gym two hours every Saturday afternoon. Donnie did some research on the rules which are pretty much like normal B Ball except there is no double dribble. But the handicapping system would not work for us since we had no one to play except ourselves. Thru the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) we found a group in Houston similar to our own and the Lone Star Wheelchair Basketball League was founded.
Over the next couple of years we would play a game in Dallas and two weeks later a game in Houston. A nine month season. During this time we learned the strategy behind the handicapping system put in place by the University of Illinois…a major hub of handicap organized sports. Anyone with a handicap can play wheelchair ball. The system goes like this…
- Any minor injury that precludes you from playing organized ball … your 3 points
- Single & Double Amputees … your 3 points
- Paraplegics … your 2 points
- Quadriplegics … your 1 point
A team can field 11 points at any time. So if you try to over power the other team with 3 amputees you have to field 2 quads at the same time. Now quads are good for sitting post and in some cases running plays but can easily be defeated in any speed or maneuvering play. The standard setup is 2-2-1 or 11 points. This system actually works well to equalize teams and create competitive situations.
I think it was 72 when we were first invited to the Topeka Invitational tournament. We loaded 8 guys and chairs in two vehicles leaving Dallas at 10 at night so we could avoid a extra night’s cost at the Holiday Inn, downtown Topeka, KS. We rolled into town around 8am and easily found the gym a few minutes before our 10am start time. I think it goes without saying we got crushed. We were not only tired we were outmatched. We had made small modifications to our normal wheelchairs but these teams were all playing in highly modified chairs that would be of little use anywhere except on the court. Tiny front casters, heavily cambered wheels and backs that were as low as your trunk stability would allow. We came back to Dallas energized, full of ideas and 0 and 4 in out of league play. We were amazed at what we learned and how much we improved over the next year.
We used hack saws, welders, brazing rods and upholstery needles and soon our fleet of B-Ball chairs looked more like what we had seen in Kansas. As I look at the sport today many of the expensive customized brands like Quickie, TI and others you see on the street came out of the guys we met over the next few years in Interstate play. It was a rough and tumble type of ball and not for the faint of heart. We had more than one young guy come to join us and decide he would take up table tennis instead. Collisions that put players on the floor were designed plays and I broke fingers more than once trying to stop a fast break when I was pointed in the wrong direction. Remember many of these guys were Viet Nam vets…not just of the war but also veterans of the process. Hardened by trauma, pain and loss. If a little blood bothered you then don’t come out on the court. It was a form of battle. In a time out if someone said…”we got to do something about that guy”….any number of these guys would respond…”I got it, I’ll take care of him”. I don’t think the game today is that way…still a tough sport…but a little more civilized.
A couple of stories….I could tell many but will stop with two…
We had a single BK Amp. That is a guy who lost a leg below the knee. In our world almost a normal guy. But this guy wore a prosthesis and his footwear was cowboy boots. Most practice and all games were excuses to get together in a club or a parking lot and tell stories and drink beer. We included anyone who wanted to be involved and many times a group or many groups would merge with ours and form a party. Now if there were outsiders present, you didn’t know when, but you knew this guy would pull this stunt. He would wince in pain and say he had something in his boot. Many of us would leave at that point. He would go on about it, building it up with as many people as he could involve. The payoff came as he would ask some dude to pull his boot off for him. You can guess where this is going. As they tugged he released the prosthesis and the boot with the leg still in it would slide out of his Levis. Now the reaction was about 50-50 between those who thought this was hilarious and those who were startled. Many times people who have been drinking beer and you startle them…get angry…some even want to fight. Imagine people shoving and pushing and this dude hopping around on one leg. I would always position myself close enough to see it but far enough away to escape if it turned ugly.
After a tournament again in Topeka, we were headed home. We were in Donnie’s 70 something two door Chevrolet. New car. Four of us. Three paras and a double amp. Donnie drove till we stopped and ate somewhere south of Wichita then I took the wheel. We knew we were going to be in the car for a long time…all the way to Dallas. So we wanted to be comfortable without all the chairs up front with us. Drewry (Don Drewry) the double amp and I put two of the chairs in the trunk. Then Don put mine back there. Then Don got into the trunk, pulled his chair in and like a monkey hopped down, closing the trunk and scampered into the car. Off we go.
Dark sets in and I am on cruise control crossing the Lake Dallas bridge at the same 85mph I did crossing Oklahoma. There are red lights and hello Texas DPS officer. He walks up to the car and asks me to step out. I explain that I am in a wheelchair. He asks where it is. I tell him the trunk. He asks Don to step out and open the trunk. Don tells him he uses a wheelchair also. The officer steps back. “How about the guys in the back”? I explain that they also are chair users. He puts his hand on his gun and asks how the chairs got in the trunk. I explain the process and he asks me to pop the trunk. Which I do. A relaxed officer comes back to my door and tells me he is not going to issue a citation or a warning…he says “thanks for the story”. I should have said “you too”.
The fellows I played sports with were like my team mates in high school, we became very close due to shared experience. Many of them had tragic circumstances as their lives played out. Some were heroic…some were not. Just like normal.