By Sarah Koehler | Photo courtesy Jake Williams
Like most kids, Milwaukee native Jake Williams spent his childhood days playing baseball, football and basketball. He spent his evenings at practices and his weekends traveling for tournaments. He played with friends, as part of organized teams and also just enjoying local pick-up teams. One of five kids, Williams and his four siblings were close with their parents, Carson and Lisa. The family kept busy and looked like many other traditional American households.
But then, at age 16, Williams was involved in an accident that changed the course of his life forever. While riding his bike, he was hit by a car and left partially paralyzed. His injuries meant that he would not walk again. Feeling disheartened, frightened and discouraged, he thought his days of playing sports were behind him.
But then, while Williams was recovering from his accident, a basketball player from UW-Whitewater named Chris Okon came to visit him and connect him with a local coach. That day changed Williams’s outlook — and his life — forever. Okon played wheelchair basketball, a member of UW-Whitewater’s team for differently abled athletes.
Inspired by Okon and the coach that he met, just four months after his accident, Williams started playing wheelchair basketball. A few years later, he was enrolled at UW-Whitewater as both a student and an athlete. “When I found wheelchair basketball shortly after getting hurt, it changed my life and sparked my passion for sports again,” he says.
As a student athlete on the team from 2012-2014, Williams excelled. The team went on to win the National Championship in 2014. “Jeremy Lade was my coach when I was a student at Whitewater and he had great influence in my life,” Williams explains. “He changed my perspective in life and helped shape me into a gold-medal athlete.”
In 2016, Williams was selected as a member of Team USA to compete at the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The team took home the gold medal after defeating the team from Spain, earning Williams his first Olympic gold medal. He then returned as a member of Team USA at the Paralympics in Tokyo in 2020, where the team won yet another gold medal.
But even with two Olympic gold medals to his name, Williams was driven to push himself in his sport. “I thought, if I can be a mentor for the next generation, I want to do that, too,” he explains. It was that desire to work with young athletes that prompted Williams to return to UW-Whitewater as a coach in 2022. Almost immediately, he found success in his new role. Last year, with Williams coaching the team, the UW-Whitewater Men’s Wheelchair Basketball team won the National Championship again.
Williams explains that the team at Whitewater consists of 14 athletes (all students) from across the country. There are 11 collegiate teams (including from some big names like the University of Alabama, Auburn University, the University of Arizona and the University of Illinois,) but Whitewater is the only Division-III school in the mix. The regular season consists of eight tournaments and a national championship tournament to conclude the season.
The team’s practice and competition schedule is just as time-consuming and demanding as any other sport, Williams explains. “We practice every day from 6:30-8:30 a.m., and scrimmage from 3-5 p.m. with lifts in between,” Williams says. “Our schedule is in full-force from September through March every year.”
And when the players aren’t on the basketball court, they are attending classes, completing assignments and projects, and pursuing their degrees. In the off-season, national team players and alumni will return to campus to live and train for the Paralympic Games, while other players go home to work summer jobs like so many other college students.
Williams contends that there is no better place to train for the Paralympics than UW-Whitewater and the training isn’t just about the athletic ability of the players, but about their attitudes and mentality as well. “In the disabled community, there can be a wide-spread victim mentality, and my goal is to get the best version of all my athletes as players and people, so they are able to be successful on and off the court,” Williams says. “I focus on accountability, teamwork, passion and character building.”
It is these same elements that helped Team USA win the gold medal for a third consecutive time in Paris last summer, beating Team Great Britain in the championship game. He says the team’s third gold-medal win had very little to do with luck. “We have a high standard for our athletes on Team USA,” he explains. “It is very difficult to make the team, much less win a gold medal. We train hard, for multiple hours a day, and compete at the highest level. Team USA is always the country everyone wants to beat.”
He says that the Paris Games were also a pivotal moment for the sport of wheelchair basketball in general. The sport itself is not new — it was first played by World War II veterans in 1945 at Corona Naval Station in California, and at Framingham, Massachusetts, and the first wheelchair basketball tournament in the U.S. was held in Illinois in 1949.
But, for the first time since wheelchair basketball was introduced at the Paralympics in Rome in 1960, the games were all streamed live on NBC/Peacock this past year and all the games were played to sold-out audiences. “I was so proud and having all the hard work pay off was so rewarding,” Williams says, “We got so much coverage and recognition, and finally were being recognized as equals to the Olympics. I am so excited for [the next summer Paralympics in] Los Angeles, as Paris is just the beginning.”
As he and the team look toward new challenges — and LA — Williams vows that he’ll be there, either as a player or as a fan. While some of his goals are now centered around his family and personal life, wheelchair basketball will always have a role in his life in some way. “Wheelchair basketball is a highly competitive, fast-paced sport that is amazing to watch and play,” he says. “I highly encourage everyone to come check it out, whether it’s coming to our UW-Whitewater College Tournament or streaming our Team USA games during the Paralympics. Our men’s team also holds demonstrations at local schools and clubs for people to try the sport. You don’t have to be disabled to play! Wheelchair basketball can be a life-changing sport for anyone.”
The game itself differs from able-bodied basketball in only a few ways, and there are rules and regulations about the players’ wheelchairs and equipment. According to the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF), game play will look familiar to anyone new to the sport: there are five players on a team, with rosters of up to 12 players, and the game consists of four 10-minute periods, with overtime periods added if there is a tie at the end of the first 40 minutes of play.
The game is played on a standard-sized court, with the same basket height, foul line and three-point line as in able-bodied basketball. Scoring is also similar, with free throws worth 1 point, field goals inside the 3-point line worth 2 points, and field goals beyond the 3-point line worth 3 points.
Per the IWBF rules, once a team has possession of the ball, they have 24 seconds to attempt a shot. If the team fails to score, or doesn’t attempt to score, within that allotted time period, possession of the ball is turned over to the opposing team. Players are allowed to push their wheelchairs while dribbling the ball, but after every two pushes, the player must either dribble, pass or shoot. This is essentially the equivalent of the traveling rule in able-bodied basketball.
Unlike able-bodied basketball, however, there is no penalty for a double dribble. Wheelchair basketball players are allowed to start, stop and then restart dribbling without incurring any penalty. The biggest differences between able-bodied basketball and wheelchair basketball have to do with fouls. Because the wheelchair is considered part of the player’s body, all contact rules apply to the chairs, as well as to the players themselves. A player can be issued a technical foul for lifting legs to gain an advantage or use their feet on the floor to help “steer” the chair. Identically to able-bodied basketball, any player who commits five fouls in a game must be replaced by another player.
The game of wheelchair basketball is spreading to a more global audience and gaining momentum as a popular sport. The IWBF now has four international chapters, with commissions and teams in four zones: Europe, Asia Oceania, Africa and The Americas. Within those zones are 111 individual teams working to advance the sport, help individual athletes and compete on an international scale. Because of this, the sheer number of teams and talent in the sport has made the sport increasingly more competitive — and it makes Team USA’s “three-peat” win in Paris even more impressive.
But perhaps the most important element of the game is the inclusion it promotes among athletes who might otherwise feel that they don’t have a place in the world of Olympic sports. Organizations like the IWBF, teams like the UW-Whitewater Men’s Wheelchair Basketball team, and coaches and players like Jake Williams are proving that wheelchair basketball has earned its place among the ranks as a highly respected and competitive sport.
