Perth Wheelcats basketballer Chris Barty spent a day running clinics for Year 5 and 7 classes in the School Gymnasium for the first time ever.

The Wheelcats, a word play on the WA basketball team ‘The Wildcats’, are Wheelchair Sports WA’s representatives in the National Wheelchair Basketball League and Mr Barty has been playing the sport for eight years.

Mr Barty explained that, to make ‘fair’ teams, players in the National Wheelchair Basketball League are classified according to a rating scale of their disability. “‘One’ is the most severe, indicating the player has become a paraplegic as the result of perhaps a car accident severely damaging their spine, through to ‘four and a half’, where a player has a minor functional disability, such as a missing foot. I have cerebral palsy in both of my legs and slightly in my right arm, which is in the ‘three’ classification,” Mr Barty said. “The total of a team will add up to ‘14’”.

Mr Barty showed the classes how to use a sport wheelchair, which featured a bumper bar and wheel protection. “He took the boys through how the chair works – it’s actually quite difficult,” Prep School Sportsmaster Brady Leckie said. “He started out with a few games to teach the boys control, such as dribbling activities, and a modified game to finish. This is such a great opportunity for these kids and it’s good to put them in the same space.”

Mr Leckie explained that Andrew Dewberry, a student in Year 5BC who has a physical disability, was his inspiration for recruiting a wheelchair basketball athlete to run the clinics for the students at Christ Church. The wheelchair basketball games were met with enthusiasm by the Year 5 and 7 classes and Mr Leckie, Senior School Physical Education teacher Luke Farmer and RENTA Jamie Rumball even joined in on a few of the games.

“Our goal is to get people involved in the sport when they are young,” Mr Barty said. “For kids with disabilities in the classroom, this is a way we can integrate them into P.E. activities.”

“The national teams train a minimum of six times a week on the court and about two weight sessions a week. We actually have the best wheelchair sport programme in Australia right here in WA and it is growing all the time.

“We want to create awareness and show the kids that there is a bit of skill involved – they realise that this sport is a pretty tough thing to do.”