SPORTS 'N SPOKES

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London Calling

An event like the first International Tournament of Champions, staged in North Carolina last August, is an important affair, far more so for what it forecasts than for its immediate result.

A year out from London 2012, fans, players, and coaches got a firsthand preview of the defenders and pretenders to basketball's Paralympic throne.

"In a tournament like this, as badly as you want to win, it's critically more important that you work on consistent game plans that work against the upper tier," notes Paul Schulte, whose dramatic buzzer-beating 3-point shot won the last Paralympic medal, a bronze, for the United States men in 2000.

Courtside as he watched defending world and Paralympic titleholders Australia battle Great Britain, Schulte adds, "That's why this tournament is so great."

The inaugural ITOC was the effort of National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA) president Dick Bryant, who wanted to make sure the U.S. teams had quality competition in the build-up to London.

Making the long journey to the Lake Norman area just north of Charlotte were six of the top seven men's (Australia, Canada, Great Britain, USA, Germany, Japan) and five of the top six women's (USA, Germany, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands) teams from the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Like the Aussie men, the American women also hold current world and Paralympic trophies.

The calendar leading up to a Paralympic Games is a fraught time. Those athletes and teams that have been successful are concerned with defending their position, while all others hungrily seek to improve theirs.

Everyone is anxious. Players fret about surviving the final cuts for their national teams, while the coaches agonize on those decisions and molding 12 individuals into a cohesive unit that must first qualify for and then seek to achieve Paralympic success.

The teams on top, such as the American women, unquestioned queens of the hill with Athens and Beijing gold around their necks, are focused on staying there while the U.S. men are still struggling to regain the pinnacle of the medal stand they haven't been to for 23 years.

"Since Sydney, we haven't been on the Paralympic podium," says Schulte, "and that's been in the forefront of everyone's mind."

It's not that they haven't been close. Only the magic that is Patrick Anderson, who willed Canada past the Americans in double overtime, prevented the U.S. from making the final game in Beijing. A dispirited and emotionally fatigued U.S. side then lost the bronze to a Great Britain squad that, according to Schulte, had nothing to lose.

"We've struggled in our end game situations," says USA men's coach Jim Glatch, highlighting perhaps the biggest obstacle to USA success. He didn't have to reach far for an example. It happened again in the ITOC, where USA White was handling Canada before blowing a nine-point lead in the last five minutes.

Check out the complete article in the November 2011 issue of S'NS.

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