Wheelchair basketball tournament brings competition and camaraderie to St. Clair County Community College

Friday and Saturday brought some of the best wheelchair basketball players to St. Clair County Community College in Port Huron, Michigan, for the sixth annual Wolverine Invitational.

"The Wolverine Invitational is always my favorite tournament of the year," said University of Michigan senior Drew Dame. "I think it's run really well and all the teams that come out. It's really fun to see the same people year after year and it's just great competition."

The tournament hosted teams from not only Michigan, but Arizona, Pennsylvania and Canada.

"When we provide wheelchair basketball, and provide the platform like this and let these athletes shine and show what they can do, it changes how they are then perceived. Not just on the basketball court but in everyday life, in the classroom and in the workplace," said Erik Robeznieks, University of Michigan associate director of adaptive sports and fitness.

"For me, wheelchair basketball, as soon as I sat in the chair, it was liberating," said Ana Jermstead, University of Michigan social work graduate student. "Everybody has this assumption that wheelchairs are confining, but at the end of the day they are tools that give us freedom, and wheelchair basketball is just that."

Wheelchair basketball is one of a handful of adaptive sports offered at the University of Michigan. The school also has adaptive track and field, para powerlifting, wheelchair rugby and wheelchair tennis.

"There is this stigma, you know, or less than, that we're not real athletes," said Jermstead. "We're real athletes. We do the same things that able-bodied athletes do; it might even just be a little more challenging."

"This has a transformational impact across the board," added Robeznieks. "It normalizes disability, and now you start to see people as athletes, and as students and as people just like anybody else."

Plans are already in the works for next year's Wolverine Invitational, which will take place in Ann Arbor, Michigan.