HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- "If that's not a clean lay-up, let's try to pass it around and find an open look."
The sounds of basketball practice are familiar: coaches barking instructions, the thumping of the ball, the sound of rubber squeaking on a wooden floor.
"Straight chest pass, don't worry about the bounce, 'cause if you bounce pass in the lane, it's going to be dangerous," said youth coach Derek Hoot to one of his young charges.
But the squeaking rubber you'll hear at the Henrico Sports and Events Center this weekend is a little different than the sound of the Nikes or Adidas you may be used to hearing.
"Nice, shot, nice shot. Alright defense, Jordan's number one," said Hoot.
The National Wheelchair Basketball Championships are here. Central Virginia is hitting the big time.
"It really infuses you with confidence, and it gives you a social outlet too," said Hoot. "I mean a lot of those kids are very social, they have friends at school, but it's different when you meet somebody who has your same disability or to meet people with other disabilities that you've never heard of."
Hoot has been coaching junior basketball players for Sportable, an adaptive sports club, for the past three years. He says the sport and the competitions bring players and their families out into a world they might not have known about.
"Not only does it help you make friends, you have friends around the country, in some cases around the world, but your parents also get to connect too and be like, 'Hey, what do you, how do you deal with this? How do you deal with that?'" said Hoot.
Sportable CEO Hunter Leemon says having the national championships here will lift up not just the players but an entire community.
"A lot of people in our community, especially if they're not aware of what adaptive athletics is, they see our athletes as a point of inspiration, and that's fine," said Leemon. "We don't discourage that, per se. But that's not what our athletes think they are. They think they're athletes. And while they may be an inspiration to you, they're out there to kick your butt. They're out there to compete, they're out there to win."
"So cut again and call for Wyatt to pass to you again," said Hoot as his players bunched up under the basket.
Hoot knows all about that motivation.
"I had my right leg amputated when I was six years old because the growth plate died in my knee," said Hoot. "So I was given a prosthetic leg."
Hoot said a sense of isolation comes with such a devastating diagnosis: his twin brother does not have a disability which meant back then only one brother could take part in competitions.
"He played youth football in middle school and I was really, really jealous that he got to get involved in team sports," said Hoot.
But within a few years, Hoot discovered wheelchair basketball and he says that ongoing experience has helped him guide these young athletes to bring out the competitor and especially, the joy within.
"A lot of these kids have been told, 'You can't do this in gym class, or we want to be careful with you," said Hoot. "'We don't want you to get hurt.' And they go and they play a high-performance sport, and they realize I can do this with a little bit of contact, a little bit of speed. And it's fun and you know, you can get hurt, but that's just sports, right?
Hoot also plays in the adult division and he says with a thousand competitors here he and his players are ready for a very bright spotlight.
"This national tournament will just bring this to an entirely different level," he said. "Some of them have college ambitions."
"Sweet. I gotcha, I gotcha," said Hoot, approvingly as a player made a long-range shot.
The youth division championships will be played at the Henrico Sports & Events Center on April 5-7. The adult divisions will battle it out next weekend, April 12-14.
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