Relationship between Elite Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Skills Testing and Future Success in the Sport.
Wheelchair basketball has enjoyed enormous success from its humble beginnings as a means of rehabilitation for World War II veterans who had suffered paralyzing injuries to one of the
fastest growing sports for athletes with a disability. As participation in and the popularity of this sport has grown, so have the coaching techniques and curriculum.
Participation in a regular physical activity is important for everyone but is an essential part of the rehabilitation process and certainly for participation in sports competition. Included are measures of aerobic and anaerobic capacities as they relate to functional capacity or classification.3-6 The International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF) classification system of eight classes (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5). The groupings are “based on the player’s physical capacity to execute fundamental basketball movements: pushing the wheelchair, dribbling, shooting, passing, catching, rebounding, and reacting to contact.”
Wheelchair basketball is a high intensity, intermittent activity that requires the player to maneuver the chair and handle the basketball by shooting, passing, dribbling, or rebounding.15 Performance analysis has been suggested as a way to provide the coaches of wheelchair basketball teams with findings to improve training plans and competition management.16 Gomez et al used game-related statistics from the official box scores for games played during the Beijing Paralympics 2008 and the World Wheelchair Basketball Championship 2010. In the final analysis, field-goals percentage and free throws rate were the most important factors in men’s games while field-goals percentage and offensive rebounding percentage were important in women’s games.
Sport Exerc Med Open J. 2018; 4(1): 3-8. doi: 10.17140/SEMOJ-4-154
