Wheelchair Softball Championship Goes To Team Gumbo
Joe Wittkamp’s competitive nature took over.
Despite battling a few health issues, the Navy veteran and Paralyzed Veterans of America Buckeye Chapter member provided the pitching power to lead Team Gumbo to a National Veterans Wheelchair Games (NVWG) wheelchair softball championship Saturday night.
Wittkamp came in in relief twice, allowed five hits and no runs and recorded four strikeouts in Team Gumbo’s 4-1 title-game victory over Team Crawfish at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.
A 53-year-old Jackson, Ohio, resident, Wittkamp also had two hits — two long singles. But it also helped Team Gumbo jumped out to a four-run first inning, scoring two runs off errors and then holding off Team Crawfish at the end. This marked Wittkamp’s 30th year playing wheelchair softball, and he still loves teaching others and thrives on competition.
“I like to win. I don’t come here to lose. I’m a competitor,” says Wittkamp, who served from 1989 to 1994 and sustained a level T8 complete spinal-cord injury (SCI) Oct. 17, 1993, in a motor vehicle accident in North Carolina. “But I really enjoy teaching the novice — ’cause they’re the beginners, someone who has never even played before. They come out here and try it for the first time, and they fall in love with it.”
First Time At Kids Day
Army veteran Gregory Asher also had a shining moment, as he loved serving as a mentor at the NVWG’s Kids Day Saturday.
So did his mentee, Andrew Schlumbrecht.
They shared a love of dogs — and since Asher brought along his 4 1/2-year old Maltese Chihuahua mix, Cocoa, to the event, the three of them became best friends quickly inside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.
“Oh, it was fantastic. He [Andrew] taught me how to pop a wheelie in my wheelchair. He taught me how to stand up in it. He was the mentor, and I was the athlete. He was awesome,” says the 68-year-old Asher. “I love this little kid. We just met, and we bonded really well. And I hope to one day meet him again, see him again.”
Saturday’s second day of the NVWG, sponsored by Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) and the Department of Veterans Affairs, featured plenty of action for wheelchair athletes. They started bowling at 7:30 in the morning and also competed in air pistol, wheelchair softball, power soccer, wheelchair rugby, 9-ball billiards, table tennis, cornhole, esports and the obstacle course known as “slalom.”
This year’s Kids Day featured plenty of veterans helping four of the younger generation of wheelchair athletes. Chief of the Spinal Cord Injury Division at the Milwaukee VA Medical Center Ken Lee, MD, dressed as a jester this time around and led athletes in stretching before they participated in adaptive cornhole, wheelchair softball and other activities.
Afterward, the kid athletes and their families joined the veterans for a lunch in the convention center. Schlumbrecht, who was born with spina bifida, had just returned from a spina bifida camp in Metairie, La., this week. NVWG athlete and wheelchair football player Tony Torres spoke at the camp. Schlumbrecht’s mom, Elsa Rendon, happened to see Torres’ Facebook post about PVA looking for athletes to attend Kids Day and decided to attend with the family. Besides Schlumbrecht and his mom, her fiancé, Randy Osterly, and daughter, Katelyn, also attended and talked to other veterans.
Schlumbrecht likes playing wheelchair football, but he especially likes dogs. Their family has a 2-year-old Chi-weenie puppy named Bear at home.
“He has the personality of a bear and that’s his name, too,” Schlumbrecht says. “He’s ferocious, playful. He sleeps a lot.”
Later, Schlumbrecht found Army veteran and PVA Minnesota Chapter member Bruce Henderson and his 2-year-old yellow Labrador service dog, Newton. And they hung out together, too.
“I like all the dogs,” Schlumbrecht says. “They’re cute.”
A PVA Cal-Diego Chapter member, this marked Asher’s second straight NVWG. He served from 1974 to 1977 in administration and sustained a C4/C5/C6 SCI in 1974 at Fort Ord in California.
The PVA Cal-Diego Chapter member and Lake Elsinore, Calif., resident saw Kids Day last year at the 2023 NVWG in Portland, Ore. Asher signed up to be a mentor this year and was picked. He loves kids and has spent years helping kids and coaching kids in able-bodied football, basketball and baseball at his local Parks and Recreation Department and Orange County Junior All-Americans tackle football program.
“I saw it last year and was so impressed by it, I said ‘I just gotta get involved in that,’” Asher says.
Wonder Woman Wandlyn
Air Force veteran and PVA Buckeye Chapter Wandlyn Handy says the Games left a big impression on her, too. They help keep her mental health better intact and stave off depression. She competed in bowling early Saturday morning and had a blast in her third NVWG overall.
A Dayton, Ohio, resident, Handy served in the Air Force from 1976 to 1987 as an executive support officer and then as a chief of equal opportunity and treatment.
“I went in when that first group of women went into the Air Force, and I was one of the original writers of the regulations on sexual harassment,” Handy says.
She says she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was 19 before it went into remission, and she served her country before it returned in 2005.
“But when I come here, it gives me a week to just not think about anything but just me and having fun,” Handy says. “Being around friends that are the same around me, I’m at a level playing field.”
