A Sport that Surprises

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Most days, the University of Arizona’s men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball teams share the North Gym at the Student Recreation Center. That’s where they practice, play their home tournaments and take note of the curious faces pressed to the windows. Passersby often linger and ask, as women’s team member Lily Lautenschlager puts it, “What is going on in there? I’ve never seen that before.” 

Come April, those same student-athletes will take to the court at McKale Memorial Center — one of college basketball’s most iconic stages — as the U of A hosts 20 games over four days for the National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s Intercollegiate Division National Championships. 

For first-time spectators, wheelchair basketball often defies expectations. The sport is lightning fast, highly strategic and relentlessly physical. 

If you’re close to the action, you might even catch a whiff of burnt rubber. 

“Wheelchair basketball is intense,” Lautenschlager says. “Take whatever you think it is and turn up the intensity by a hundred percent.” 

“It’s basketball combined with hockey combined with rugby combined with football,” says men’s Head Coach Michael Beardsley, who has spent 16 years in the university’s adaptive athletics community. “There’s a lot of contact. A lot of aggressiveness. 

“Our guys can get up and down the court in four seconds.” 

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The rules largely mirror the nondisabled game: five on five, 10-foot hoop, same court dimensions, same scoring distances. 

The big difference is the classification system, which assigns each athlete a point value (1.0 to 4.5) based on the player’s physical capacity. The five players on the court must total 14 points or fewer, creating complex lineup decisions in real time. 

Managing those lineups shapes nearly every strategic move made by women’s Head Coach and two-time U.S. Paralympian Josie Aslakson, who played one season as a Wildcat before taking over as head coach. 

“People don’t always realize how much goes into it until they see it for themselves,” she says. “They realize quickly: This is high-level basketball.” 

Lautenschlager, a Class 3.0 athlete, often operates as the Wildcats’ de facto point guard — reading the court, pushing the pace and keeping her teammates connected. 

“I try to be the energy,” she says. “I do my best to pick my teammates up, stay optimistic and keep people out of their heads as much as I can. Obviously that wouldn’t show up in the score, but I do feel like that is one of my strengths on the court.” 

This season, Arizona’s men’s and women’s teams find themselves facing different challenges. 

The men are the defending national champions, a breakthrough that arrived only after championship-game losses in 2023 and 2024. 

“They were all learning lessons for us,” Beardsley says. “Anybody can beat anybody on any given day.” 

“All the effort and focus that went into winning that championship, it was just so special,” says Ben Thornton, a Class 3.0 athlete, four-time men’s captain and multiyear All-American. “Losing back to back was definitely hard on everyone involved. But, looking back on it, I think our experience in those games ultimately won us the championship.” 

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This year, though, half the roster is new. Three of last year’s starters are gone, including the 2025 tournament MVP, Justyn Newman. For better or for worse, this season is a fresh start.  

“We’re not viewing it as defending anything,” Beardsley says. “This is a new team that has to prove itself.” 

On the women’s side, Aslakson’s group is chasing a long-awaited breakthrough of its own. Only five women’s programs will compete at collegiate nationals this year, and Arizona has finished fourth for three straight seasons. 

“Fourth is getting a little redundant,” Aslakson says with a laugh. “We would love to mix it up and contend with the top three.” 

Her players feel that urgency, too. 

“There’s pressure,” Lautenschlager admits. “But, on our team, we always say, ‘Embrace the pressure.’” 

“We really want to show out,” she continues. “We really want people to see what our sport is and what we can do.” 

Behind the scenes, Arizona’s adaptive athletics programs operate with far fewer resources than NCAA teams. They are not funded by Arizona Athletics. They can’t offer full-ride scholarships. They recruit nationally without the benefit of marketing departments or major budgets. And yet these programs excel in all facets. The men’s program has produced 18 NWBA Academic All-Americans since Beardsley took over in 2019, while the women’s program has surpassed 20 Academic All-American selections since Aslakson became head coach in 2021. 

Pete Hughes, Arizona’s director of adaptive athletics, hopes that the upcoming championships will shine a light not only on the athletes’ talents but also on their day-to-day experiences in wheelchairs. On-campus clinics and a Paralympian meet and greet are in the works, along with a “wheelchair basketball experience” where visitors can hop into sports chairs themselves before heading to McKale to watch the real thing. 

As Arizona prepares to welcome the collegiate national field, Beardsley hopes Tucson shows up in full force. 

“I would love to have the McKale crowd behind us,” he says. “I’d love to have a home crowd where we can really get some momentum, swing some missed shots in our favor and take advantage of hosting.” 

With no professional wheelchair basketball league in the United States, the collegiate championships represent the national pinnacle of the sport. 

“This is as high-level as you’re ever going to get,” Thornton says. “The fact that it’s here in Tucson is an opportunity of a lifetime to just come out and see a game or two and find out what wheelchair basketball is all about.”