Amazing athletes competed in KCK
The championship of the 43rd annual Wheelchair Softball World Series was decided in Kansas City, Kan. The T-Bones Stadium hosted the 60 games over three days starting Aug. 9. Nineteen U.S. teams and one international team (Japan) faced off to determine a champion. The Nebraska Barons downed the Minnesota Rolling Twins 6-5 to hang onto the title.
“The Barons are perennial national champions,” says John Teegarden, Softball director for Midwest Adaptive Sports. He was tapped as this year’s World Series tournament director by the National Wheelchair Softball Association, official governing body of U.S. wheelchair softball.
A lifelong player, Teegarden pitches for the Kansas City Royals Wheelchair Softball Club. He was one of 17 Royals on the World Series roster.
Formerly the Kansas City Diamonds, the 30-plus-year-old team beat the New York Yankees to win fifth place in the World Series consolation bracket.
Wheelchair softball, first organized in the mid-1970s encourages fitness for women and men of all ages. The youngest Royal is 21; the oldest, 68.
Royals Club members have day jobs, but make no mistake, they’re serious athletes.
“Once they start playing, they realize their athletic career isn’t over. They’re still the athletes they’ve always been, they just have to adapt to it in a different way,” Teegarden says.
The team’s short stop, 29-year-old Ricardo Lucien is an All-American and led his team, the Movin’ Mavs to victory in the 2017 National Wheelchair Basketball Association Intercollegiate Championship.
“We snatched up Ricardo as soon as he came to Kansas City,” Teegarden says.
The Royals No. 35 also plays tennis, skis on snow and water and kayaks. He won a full scholarship to play wheelchair basketball at the University of Texas at Arlington, a longtime goal.
“I worked really hard to earn that,” Lucien says. “If I hadn’t, I might still be in Venezuela, not healthy or fit. Thanks to the scholarship, I’ve had this great experience.”
He labored his way back to champion-level athlete over the past nine years. Before the shooting in his hometown of Caracas that left him paralyzed, Lucien played competitive baseball, tennis and basketball. After undergoing painful surgery and recovery, he endured grueling physical therapy before embarking on his own uphill reascent to fitness.
“I dedicated myself to five or six hours a day of exercise, practice and weightlifting, then I added CrossFit,” he says. “I worked to develop my body for better performance in sports, but specifically basketball.”
This was Lucien’s first season playing wheelchair softball. The game is adapted for wheelchair athletes and requires intense coordination, accuracy, agility and concentration. Players must propel their wheelchairs while catching or throwing the ball. Games are played on asphalt with bases 50 feet apart instead of 60. Shorter base paths mean players have less time to make plays.
The wheelchair softball season begins in mid-spring and culminates with the World Series. The Royals hold an annual “able-bodied wheelchair softball tournament,” Teegarden says.
Sports offer enormous benefits for everyone, Lucien says, but especially people with spinal cord injuries. He’s always had a passion for sports. The MBA student loves the adrenalin rush, the challenge, the competition, testing personal limits and perennial striving to be better. And he cautions against pitying or patronizing people in wheelchair sports.
“It isn’t just recreation for poor people in wheelchairs,” he says. “We were athletes before our injury, and we’re athletes now.”
Editor’s note: Watch the entire 2018 Wheelchair Softball World Series online at www.uclicktv.com.
