Even as 200 teams comprising 1,400 youths battled on the courts and fields to fulfill a dream of winning a prize and being crowned top sportsperson, there was another group of athletes – Wheelchair basketballers - who were there to show everyone how they achieved their own dream of shooting hoops against all odds.

From the Wheelchair Basketball Association (WBA) Singapore, this wheelchair basketball team first played a full-court 5-on-5 demonstration game amongst themselves before inviting the public to mount wheelchairs and compete against them.

That was the scene at ROMP’!09, a Singapore 2010 CAN! Event which featured a nationwide sports carnival designed for youths to bond through a common love for sports. Themed “Dream big no matter who you are”, the message was clear: To dare youths to dream big.

Said 52-year-old Lim Puay Tiak, Chairman of WBA, “This was a wonderful chance to increase public awareness and watching able-bodied and disabled athletes play together is like the realisation of a dream.”

Established in 2007, WBA started from a dream harboured both by the Singapore Disability Sports Council (SDSC) and many basketballers from the Handicapped Welfare Association (HWA) who had been playing informally for 30 years.

“It is good for wheelchair users to take on a sport,” added Mr Lim, “because it’s a kind of rehabilitation and restores you to better health. It’s also a great way to return into mainstream living, because sports makes you look at your ability - not disability, what you have - not what you don’t have. You begin to use muscles you never knew you had before, and it’s truly a revitalising experience.”

Competitions like these have a vision of an inclusive society to involve wheelchair users to fit into the larger community. It is also an excellent way of helping the able and disabled to understand and empathise with each other especially when they play together on the same team.

For instance, 53-year-old Edwin Khoo - one of the 12 members on WBA’s Management Committee - has been in a wheelchair since he was two years old. He was born in the late 1950s when there was a polio epidemic. When asked how wheelchair basketball was different from standing basketball, he breezily replied, “We’re on wheels, they’re on legs. That’s the only difference!”

As the day’s events ended, the basketballers’ presence on the courts had struck a deep impression on everyone who had witnessed their game.

In his closing speech, Mayor, North East District and Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports & Ministry of Transport Teo Ser Luck also shared his own experience cycling with people from all walks of life, and how sports leave all differences at the sidelines when its players walk onto the court as equals.

Indeed, the wheelchair basketballers showed that they were truly the equals of any able-bodied individual in terms of spirit.

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