Seats of Power

There’s an element of venomous competition at work here that the players themselves struggle to explain.

Sure, contact sports are rough, but these particular athletes say you haven’t seen rough until you’ve seen it from a wheelchair.

Dangerous? Let’s just say few of their mothers watch them play.

“We’re hitting so hard out there we’re actually shearing metal,” says John Box, a defensive back for the Orange Crush wheelchair hockey team. “The first time my mom came to a game, she kept screaming, ‘Don’t hit him so hard!’ There’s a lot of contact. . . . It’s shocking to see it.”

Images of wheelchair athletes competing in marathons and on the basketball court have entered popular culture--both are intense but “polite” sports. Far less known is the growing number of wheelchair athletes who play high-impact, knock-’em-down contact sports.

“We’re here and we’re dedicated,” says Doug Champa of Placentia, who plays basketball as well as hockey and coaches quadriplegic rugby. “It’s all relative. I think we put more into the sport than the able-bodied athlete who makes $10 million a year.”

There are about 450 athletes playing wheelchair rugby throughout the United States--10 of 60 teams nationally are in the Orange County area.

Wheelchair floor hockey is a more recent contact-sport phenomenon, catching on within the past three years.

It got its start 15 years ago when Bob Eastland, director of a Boys & Girls Club in Buena Park, worked with young athletes who were ready for a more aggressive wheelchair sport.

It was formally organized in 1993 as Anaheim-based Sports on Wheels, a chapter of the national Amateur Athletic Union. There are now eight teams competing in Orange and Los Angeles counties and a scattering of teams elsewhere, including Minnesota, Florida and Kansas.

Meanwhile, another contact sport, wheelchair football, is building a small following in Santa Barbara and Texas.

“It’s very exciting to watch,” says Box, of Orange, who traded his tennis racquet for a hockey stick five years ago. “You’re on the ground; people roll over you. It’s like a car race: If people don’t see a crash, they don’t leave happy. . . . They see plenty of crashes watching our games.”

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In wheelchair hockey, which is played in a roller-hockey rink using a small hardball rather than a puck, there are five athletes on the floor for each side. Chairs must have high-impact construction; players wear protective eye and head gear.

Team members can be paraplegic, quadriplegic or able-bodied. Each player is given a “handicap” based on individual level of injury or impairment and assigned a class number based on that level.

Each team is allowed a maximum of 10 points. A Class 1 player is someone with impaired movement from the upper chest down and is assigned one point; a Class 2 player has impairment from the mid-torso down and is assigned two points; a Class 3 athlete has impairment from the waist down and is assigned three points.

In wheelchair rugby, all players are quadriplegic, and the play is no-holds barred.

“In rugby, there are very few rules,” says Champa, whose muscular arms are covered in tattoos. “You can hit them any time, anywhere.”

The sport is played on a basketball court with a volleyball, four athletes per team. Wheelchairs have to be 11 centimeters off the ground, “so they hit like bumper cars,” Champa says. Players are strapped in, their legs protected by a solid metal frame in front of the chair. They don’t wear helmets.

The players’ level of impairment varies. While some have partial use of their arms, others tape their arms in position to catch the ball in their laps, Champa says.

Rugby players are assigned handicaps based on upper-body muscle strength ranging from half a point for players who have only their biceps to work with to 3 1/2 points for a player who has very strong abdominal muscles and upper body strength. A team is allowed eight points.

Medical crews are always standing by during competition, and many of the players have “helpers” on the sidelines to put them upright when their chairs topple.

How often do they fall?

“I must have fallen down five times last night in practice,” says rugby player Joe Fisk, 39, of Long Beach.

“When you get out there, you know you’re going down,” says Luz Ayala, 22, of East Los Angeles, said to be one of only three women in the country who play wheelchair rugby. “It’s all part of it,” she says with a grin. “I just love contact sports.”

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Contact sports are taken seriously by wheelchair athletes who would like to see them mainstreamed into the the sports world. The fact that there are hundreds playing with little recognition in the able-bodied community is a bone of contention for some.

“If the sport has the word ‘wheelchair’ in front of it, there’s pity involved, or it just doesn’t count,” Champa says. “They just need to watch one game. It’s great entertainment.”

Dedication has more to do with ability than the level of a player’s impairment contends Champa, 30, who says he has committed his life to wheelchair sports. When he isn’t teaching sports to disabled kids, he’s searching for new competition.

“I just want to compete against the best,” he says. “We’re not looking for softies out there; we’re looking for people who can hack it.”

Champa says that kids benefit a great deal from competing in wheelchair sports and meeting accomplished wheelchair athletes. It builds morale and gives them a sense of belonging that they have trouble feeling in the able-bodied world, he says.

“When I go to a school and see this kid in a wheelchair, he tells me that everyone thinks he’s a wimp. . . . They pick on him,” says Champa, who coaches at camps for disabled youngsters. “Then I show up. . . . It’s clear no one’s messing with me. I give him hope.”

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It’s that toughness that makes contact sports so appealing, say the athletes. And fights on the court go along with the game.

“It usually starts when someone’s cheating, or you perceive them to be cheating,” Box says. “Then its either sticks swinging or fists flying. It only lasts a couple of seconds, but its pretty intense.”

“It’s human nature,” Champa says. “You’re in your own world out there. It’s very competitive.”

Ayala says that, although she’s just one of the guys when she gets on the rugby court, the fact that she is a woman makes it especially fun.

“I taunt the guys sometimes,” Ayala says. “I burn them and then smile.”

* Anaheim-based Sports on Wheels, (714) 939 8727. United States Quad Rugby Assn., (215) 504-0443.