Music City Thunder Wheelchair Basketball

Our wheelchair basketball program, the Music City Thunder, finished out a wonderful season as spring was emerging! For the first time in several seasons, we had two teams, one in the Prep Division, mostly for elementary school and early middle school kids, and one in the Varsity Division, mostly for kids in late middle school through high school, of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. Both are co-ed, and younger kids can play on a Varsity team, which we’d had for the past few years, but this year, our younger kids got their own team. Lots of these younger kids hadn’t played until this year, and wow was it awesome to see them learn the game and improve throughout the season!

As always, independence is fused into everything the team does, from athletes learning to be responsible for bringing everything that they need for practice and for tournaments to kids figuring out how to push both their day chair and their basketball chair together as they go to and leave practices and tournaments to figuring out the best way to navigate a hotel room for their own accessibility needs.

And perhaps the best part of the team is getting to be together both in practices and traveling to tournaments. Having friends in their teammates who just “get it” when it comes to living life and being a student athlete with a disability. It’s definitely bigger than basketball. Music City Thunder Coach Emily Hoskins is a 2-time Paralympic gold medalist and played wheelchair basketball at the University of Illinois. Our kids have a great role model in both wheelchair basketball and in what it takes to lead a successful life as a person with a disability.

Our next season starts this fall, and we’re always looking for more teammates! Go Thunder!