Leveling Up

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A few times in her early, striving years, Josie Aslakson ’20 almost gave up on her dreams. 

That she didn’t is in no small part because of her father. A spare-time fisherman in her hometown of Jordan, Minnesota, her father loves fishing about as much as Aslakson loves playing wheelchair basketball, which the two-time Paralympian does better than almost anyone. Her father is her “unofficial coach,” she says, who never let her quit on herself and has always told her, “Passions in life are very important to follow.” 

“He’s like, ‘[Fishing] is my passion. And I go to the river, and I fish, and I love it, and I’m obsessed with it,’” she says. “And he’s like, ‘I think basketball for you is something special like that. That it’s going to follow you through life, and it’s going to help you.”

Back in 2015, the year before the Rio de Janeiro games, Aslakson was 19, trying out for Team USA. She’d been cut twice already, being too young, she says, and not up to the pace of play at her sport’s highest level. She was on a wheelchair basketball scholarship at the University of Texas, Arlington, then; naturally athletic, she’d played the game since 13. 

In just a few years, wheelchair hoops had changed her. “[Basketball] really transformed who I am as a person,” says Aslakson, who lost the use of her legs in a car accident when she was 5. “When I was young and growing up with a disability in a small town, I was very shy and didn’t talk much and didn’t have any confidence in making friends or interacting. 

“And then I found basketball.” 

But for all the sport had given her, Aslakson had doubts as to her future in it. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this,” she recalls thinking. “Maybe I should pursue other things.”

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When she again didn’t make the 12-woman Team USA roster, Aslakson realized she needed a break. She didn’t try out in 2016 — her sophomore year of college, when Texas, Arlington, won an NCAA championship. But she re-entered the Paralympian fray the year after — and this time, she made the team. Aslakson kept her spot on the roster through the 2021 Tokyo games, where the Americans won bronze, and has held on to it since. In November 2023, she and her teammates won a gold medal at the Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile, securing a bid for the 2024 Paris Paralympics. 

Her college career concluded in 2020; after two transfers, she finished at the University of Arizona, whose adaptive athletics program turns 50 this year. And today, Aslakson serves as head coach of the U of A women’s wheelchair team alongside her Team USA teammate and very close friend, Courtney Ryan, an assistant coach. The two are among the 14 Wildcat Paralympians, including students and alumni, representing countries like the U.S., Australia and Japan, who’ve honed their talents while student-athletes in Tucson. 

“They’re all deeply driven, singularly focused. They’re not super social: You ask them to go to the movies, they’ll say no. They’ve got to train. They’ve got to eat right,” says Pete Hughes, Arizona Adaptive Athletics director. 

Formerly the women’s wheelchair basketball coach, Hughes recruited Ryan in 2012 after watching her hit a game-winner in a tournament in Phoenix, where she was playing for a community team. He offered her a scholarship on the spot. “She had it,” he says now. With Ryan on the team, the Wildcats — who did not yet compete in the NCAA — won the women’s division national title in 2012 and 2014, finishing as runners-up in 2013 and 2015. 

She’s not the only Paralympian coached by Hughes, who calls a light touch best. 

“The thing about coaching a Paralympian is you basically get out of the way,” he says. “You just give them a little encouragement here and there, and you’re there to support, but they’re on their path already.” 

To be a Paralympian in the U.S., Aslakson notes, is not the same as in other countries, where athletes live at training sites year-round and “just show up — day in, day out,” she says. She and her teammates, in contrast, do most of their training away from the Paralympic and Olympic training grounds in Colorado Springs, coming together for three days of intense work each month to build and sustain team chemistry. In the weeks between, Aslakson and her teammates keep their own schedules, determining which days to lift, do cardio and complete skill work. She and Ryan often complete shooting workouts together. 

Aslakson says that working full time while staying in top form for the Paralympic team is a balancing act. But for her, basketball is always at the center of her life. “Whether I’m coaching or playing,” she says, “it’s not like I have to compromise my focus.” She would like to guide her team to an NCAA championship, and when her players express a desire to someday play for Team USA, she adopts the attitude learned from her dad: “I’m not going to make you do this. But I’m not going to let you get discouraged if you don’t make a team.” 

She calls being a member of the Paralympic team “surreal.” She remembers learning about the team when she was just starting out. And she remembers the days when she questioned herself — comparing that time to now, when she is a trusted veteran, still firmly in the game that has given direction to her life while granting mentorship to her players along the way. 

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It’s something she couldn’t always have done. 

“The sport of basketball is very intense and loud, and you have to talk to your teammates, so it really brought me out of my shell and made me communicate a lot more,” she says. Without that experience, she adds, “I don’t think I would be able to be in a coaching role.” 

As Aslakson has grown in the sport, the recognition for adaptive sports has also grown. Hughes, an advocate for adaptive athletes through his nonprofit, Wheelchair Athletes Worldwide, points out that as of 2020, Paralympic and Olympic medals are worth equal amounts of money. And, he notes, the national organizing body is now the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, one of only four national Olympic committees in the world that combines the two roles in one body. 

But, he says, society has “a long way to go” in celebrating adaptive sports and athletes. 

Aslakson, meanwhile, says that “especially for adaptive athletes, the biggest thing that we can gain is visibility.” And in following her passion, she’s drawing attention not only to herself and her Team USA teammates but also to the next generation of players she mentors. 

Gifts to Adaptive Athletics

In the last year, Adaptive Athletics has received support from multiple donors, including longtime university supporters Jim and Vicki Click and Cole and Jeannie Davis. The Clicks committed a $6.5 million gift, providing the program with resources to recruit elite athletes well into the future. The Davises committed $1 million to the program to help ensure equity for disabled student-athletes and expand access to resources for student support and career readiness.