Of course, there’s also a rule book of more than 30 pages put out by the International Wheelchair Rugby Federation that includes various contact and technical fouls, which Ross learned after he spiked the ball during a team practice.
Coach Jim Zomchek reprimanded Ross quickly.
“That would have just cost us a penalty in a game,” Zomchek shouted.
Ross and fellow new player Luis Classen have bonded.
Neither is rated yet, necessary for national competitions, on the scale from 0.5 to 3.5. The rating determines each player’s function. A team’s aggregate of points on the floor can’t exceed 8 at a time.
Ross said he’s just glad to do something competitive again that isn’t on a TV screen.
“Once I started playing, it all came back to me of playing sports again,” he said. “I’ve been here ever since.”
Both Ross and the 25-year-old Classen, who broke his neck on the first day of his honeymoon in the Bahamas in a diving accident in 2002, attended their first tournament in Indianapolis last week.
Classen said watching his teammates inspired him. He’s thinking about returning to college soon in a computer-related field.
“I see that I can do so much more and I’ve been wanting to do things, like go back to school, and it’s motivating me,” he said.
Lehmann said no one is looking for sympathy. All the players have their own reasons for playing, and Lehmann, also injured in a diving accident, said his biggest goal is to get quadriplegics out of motorized wheelchairs and into ones they push themselves.
“Because you’re reaching to catch a ball or coming over to get one, it really helps you with everyday living stuff,” said Lehmann, who has scuba dived, parasailed and flown ultralight airplanes since his injury. “You use muscles you never even knew you had.”
Lehmann said once he gets a person to a practice, it’s only a matter of minutes before they’re participating.
“I don’t believe in no,” he said. “I just keep calling and calling them and bothering them. They finally say, ’I’ll come and watch’ and I go, ’You can come and watch, but you’ll be in a chair pushing when you come.”’
Women play, too, even though there are none on the Iron roster.
“There’s also a number of women who play the sport as well who are very active and they’re even meaner than the guys,” said Gus Sorenson. “They love to crash into people.”
Other players — such as Guy Bush — are serious about why they’re playing, and show their frustration on the court with sharp words to teammates who aren’t playing up to their potential.
“Hopefully, down the line they see I’m here to help out,” said Bush, who has cerebral palsy and wants another national title to go along with accolades he’s received in wheelchair basketball and softball.
Watching the bone-jarring hits delivered by speeding chairs is surreal.
“None of us wants to be pitied, we don’t want to be treated in a condescending manner,” said Hooper, who organized his team in Florida, now called the Hoveround Gunners, in 1988. “I got injured when I was 31 years old and I had every one of those stereotypes an able-bodied person has of a quad. You can’t see anything possibly that could be good on the other side of that until you’re there and until you go through that process.”
A process, he said, that was helped along with the Oscar-nominated “Murderball.” Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro’s film didn’t receive the same box office buzz that Oscar winner “March of the Penguins” did — only $1.5 million, compared to $77 million for the penguins.
Hooper said it was frustrating.
“Those guys did a great job,” Hooper said. “But nobody came to see the film. Maybe it’s too close for comfort, almost like talking about death.”
That’s the one thing everyone involved in the sport says it has helped them avoid, a spiral toward hopelessness.
“It literally, literally saves people’s lives,” Hooper said. “People come out to play quad rugby and there’s story after story after story of couch potatoes who drank beer and watched soap operas and guys who contemplated suicide who have had their lives turned around.”
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