Big representation in Australian wheelchair basketball sides for world championship

THERE’LL be a western power play from the Australian women’s and men’s wheelchair basketball teams at next month’s world championship in Germany.

WA’s Clare Nott, Amber Merritt and Sarah Vinci are members of the Gliders’ starting five, while Jannik Blair, Shaun Norris and Kim Robins will front the Rollers as they aim for a world title three-peat.

It’s an achievement not lost on the head of the Western Australian Institute of Sport’s wheelchair basketball program Brad Ness.

“To have six Australian players here, three guys and three girls and they are all in the starting five. The engine room of Australian wheelchair basketball comes out of WA,” Ness, a legend of wheelchair basketball, said this week.

One of the first picked in the Rollers is 1-point player Blair, 26, who hails from Horsham in country Victoria but now calls Perth home as a member of the Red Dust Heelers in the national competition.

“He’s a great role model for the younger guys coming through. He brings a drive – he’s only a little bloke but his engine is massive,” Ness said.

A silver medallist at the London Paralympics in 2012, Blair and the Rollers were unable to replicate that form in Rio when they were bundled out in the quarterfinals, but hope the world championships in Hamburg from August 16-26 will be a catalyst for Tokyo 2020.

“You have those experiences which make you reflect back and appreciate it through a different lens, it is a character building experience and helps you better prepare,” Blair said after a training session this week at the Bendat Basketball Centre.

Blair became a paraplegic at 12 when he rolled a ute in a paddock on the family farm.

Prior to the injury, a wheelchair basketball team had visited his primary school “so I knew it was out there”.

His rehabilitation centre also had a basketball court which was used by the Rollers as they prepared for Athens in 2004.

“Straight away that was where I set my goal. I wanted to go to the next Paralympics in ’08 which was probably a little too soon. So I got involved in basketball as soon as I could after that,” he said.

As well as two Paralympics, basketball has taken Blair all over the world. He was offered a scholarship at the University of Alabama in 2013, following a stint with the University of Missouri and earlier this year returned from his first year playing professionally in Spain.