Wheelchair rugby players hone their competitive edge

from Tampa Bay Online:

They can accelerate quickly, cut each other off and crash.

To the uninitiated spectator, it can seem frightening. To the wheelchair rugby player, it’s exhilarating.

“The best thing about it is the contact,” said Mark Welch, 46, a wheelchair rugby player with the Tampa Generals. “In no other wheelchair sport can you hit someone at full force and it’s legal.

“It’s like being in a pinball machine,” he said. “It’s not only fun hitting people. It’s fun being hit.”

The hits will be plentiful this weekend when the Tampa Generals play in the 20th Annual Coloplast International Wheelchair Rugby Tournament in Tampa. The tournament includes 10 teams, including one from Brazil and one from Canada.

Welch, 46, of Clearwater, has had a passion for wheelchair rugby since 1997, about a year after he broke his neck diving into shallow water.

During rehabilitation, nurses and hospital staff told him his life wasn’t over, but he didn’t believe them, he said.

But when he joined the Tampa Generals, it affirmed the possibilities that still existed. “When you see it with your own eyes, then you believe it,” Welch said.

Welch said he connected with other quadriplegics on the team, who counseled him and taught him life would continue. He saw some of them driving sports cars.

“I saw my life was going to be good,” Welch said. “It didn’t end there.”

Justin Stark was 10 when he became a quadriplegic after being shot.

He became tired of being the sideline assistant for sport teams and playing recreational basketball with friends, where he was the only one using a wheelchair.

After graduating from Plant City High School in 1996, he decided to give rugby a try. He was hooked from the first moment he got on the court.

It was an opportunity to compete with someone who had a similar disability, and it gave him a place to bond with other people overcoming a life-changing injury or disability. He also liked the demand, intensity and conditioning needed to play, he said.

Stark, 33, now the team’s manager and a team captain, said the sport is a combination of basketball, football and hockey rolled into one.

The game is played on an indoor basketball court with four players from each team on the court. A player can advance the ball — a modified volleyball — by passing or pushing forward with the ball on his or her lap. A player has to dribble the ball or pass every 10 seconds, Stark said.

Dave Ceruti, 47, of Wesley Chapel used to play wheelchair rugby but is now the Tampa Generals coach. He’s traveled throughout the world to play the sport and was a member of the U.S.A. national wheelchair rugby team for the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta.

He enjoys the speed, intensity and strategy of the game.

“It was a natural fit for me,” said Ceruti, who was injured playing high school football in 1980. “You never lose your competitive drive even after you have a disabling injury.

“That competitiveness is inside you whether you are in a wheelchair or not.”