Last basketball

This week was the last wheelchair basketball session of the season. Namine’s leg was still in pain, but not so much so that she didn’t want to go.

Starting off, Namine was paired up with a teammate for some simple passing. Namine has been out of basketball for a while, but many of her friends were happy to see her again.

Every week they play Sharks and Minnows, and it was here that we started to see some of Namine’s enthusiasm come back. When she’s excited, Namine is not a quiet child. Despite her volume — and so drawing the attention of pretty much the entire gym — she still made it safe as a “minnow” from one side to the other quite a few times.

After that game, the coach broke the kids up into groups. Namine’s group worked on passing, with three people passing the ball to one person, one after another, then rotating.

After small group practice, everyone gathered together for a scrimmage. Namine played too, and she started to get the hang of everything coming together in a single game. It had started to gel for her before she broke her leg, but you tend to lose a lot if you don’t do it for over a month.

After the scrimmage, everyone broke up into small groups again, more or less doing what they wanted. Some kids practiced shooting baskets. Namine, for her part, wheeled up and down the gym with teammates, with one kid wheeling and the other holding on for the ride.

When Namine first started coming to wheelchair basketball, she didn’t really have the hand strength to hold on as the “caboose” for very long, and she had a difficult time wheeling with someone holding onto her chair. Neither of those things are now true.

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