Team Esplanade Rolls To Wheelchair Basketball Title
Marine Corps veteran Pierre Sturgis had a blast at his first National Veterans Wheelchair Games.
Not only did he get to play the sport he loves, wheelchair basketball, but he helped lead his team to the wheelchair basketball title at Tuesday’s final day of the 43rd NVWG in New Orleans.
Sturgis scored a game-high 21 points and had nine rebounds, while Perry Price added 18 points and six rebounds and Jesse Lind had 13 points and 10 rebounds in Team Esplanade’s 64-39 win over Team St. Charles inside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.
Sturgis made all five of his first-half shots and went 10-of-15 from the field overall. Freddie Smith had nine points for Team St. Charles. The teams were named after streets in New Orleans.
Sturgis served from 2010 to 2021 doing logistics (motor transport) and is a left above-the-knee amputee after sustaining an out-of-service gunshot wound in April 2021.
But he actually found out a day before coming to the NVWG that he’s going back into the Marines and will be a Reservist later in August.
He loved his first NVWG experience, especially wheelchair basketball, participating in the adaptive sports and just the camaraderie.
“The older veterans came up to me. They knew I was new. The moment they see me, they was like, ‘We’ve never seen you before. You must be new.’ I’m like, ‘I am. This is my first year.’ They’re like, ‘Welcome. We appreciate you being here.’ Just the love and the camaraderie they’ve shown, it really allowed me to just be part of the community,” Sturgis says.
Norris Defends Super G Crown
New obstacles, new course, but that didn’t faze Russ Norris.
The Army veteran and Paralyzed Veterans of America Northwest Chapter member captured his second straight “Super G” obstacle course at Tuesday’s final day of the 43rd National Veterans Wheelchair Games at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.
Norris finished in 3 minutes and 28 seconds, just edging out novice, Navy veteran and PVA Mountain States Chapter member Cody Smith. Smith was the last of the eight finalists to go — and only finished a few seconds behind Norris.
This year’s Super G featured a couple of new speed bump areas, which gave competitors, including Norris, some trouble early in the event.
“The speed bumps at the very beginning, those kind of tripped me up there. Well, they’re higher and the face of them is much steeper, so you really got to get up on it and muscle through it,” says Norris, who served from 2002 to 2008 and sustained a level L1 incomplete spinal-cord injury after a 2008 four-wheeler accident.
Then, the Tacoma, Wash., resident worked his way through other areas, including the sand, gravel and rock pit, which he moved through by doing multiple bunny hops with his wheelchair.
“It’s gotten better. The more I do it, the better I get at it,” Norris says. “I call it my signature move.”
Henderson Takes Super M Title
After just missing out on the “Super M” motorized slalom obstacle course title last year, William “Willie” Hendrickson has it this time around. It’s a first for the longtime National Veterans Wheelchair Games (NVWG) participant.
The 58-year-old Army veteran and PVA Cal-Diego Chapter member won the title in 3 minutes and 8 seconds, defeating seven other competitors in Tuesday’s “Super M” obstacle course championship on the final day of the 43rd NVWG at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.
Hendrickson has won the motorized slalom 18 out of 19 years, with his only loss coming to Rene Peterson in 2021 in New York City.
Hendrickson made the Super G last year, but too many cone penalties cost him the title. This time around, he was more patient and he also got a new power wheelchair — an Invacare TDX SP2 — earlier this year. Both helped.
“It’s just a chair I’m used to,” Hendrickson says. “This chair is tuned to me. I worked on it for many months getting it dialed in to where it is right now.”
Hendrickson says he checked out the course at 7 a.m. Tuesday — three hours before the Super M — to memorize it. Hendrickson, who served from 1984 to 1986 as a calvary scout, sustained a level C4/C5/C6 incomplete spinal-cord injury in 2005 from a motorcycle accident in California. He says the hardest part of the “Super M” was a board you had to keep one wheel on.
“That was my idea — to put a board on the floor and make you put a tire on it,” he says. “You need everyday stuff that we deal with. Just putting a board on the floor, it represents an uneven sidewalk. And everybody does it, so why can’t they do it here?”
