My dream is to inspire a lot of kids and inspire a lot of adults with wheelchair basketball.
And I appreciate the owner of The George Goodman League, Matt. When I go down to the courts at Barry Farm, he makes me sit among celebrities. Every time I meet players that are well known, I tell them about what we’re doing with wheelchair basketball here in D.C.
I met John Wall in 2010 when he got drafted. He welcomed me. He introduced me to a lot of his friends. He always treats everyone good. When he sees people, he greets them like he already knows them. He gives back to the community, to kids in the hospital.
Everywhere I go, people ask me when the wheelchair basketball is going to be professional. We need to get everybody to sign a petition to recognize a professional wheelchair basketball league in the United States and all over the world. And then Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton would be able to push it to the people in Congress along with Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden.
My team, the Medstar NRH Punishers, is ranked third in the nation in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. We travel from state to state to play against all the wheelchair basketball teams. But we’re not recognized like the National Basketball Association (NBA) or WNBA.
Change is gonna come. Wheelchair basketball teams will be opening step by step. And they’ll play the way teams were back in normal times: not wearing masks on the court and all around the world. Not only adults have had to wear masks, but also kids. Yesterday, I was selling Street Sense paper and I saw a lot of kids with masks on. I always think, “How do they breathe with all the masks?” We want to bring people back to the reality that this is a wake-up call for the whole world.
And I think if we hold together, change gonna come. So, we just gotta hold together that we want to wait until the pandemic is over. When the pandemic is finally over, we can let people come and see wheelchair basketball. Not only kids, but adults, and people that are in a wheelchair, and people not in a wheelchair. We should invite people that work in the government, like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. They can push it more and get people to come. And NBA players, too.
