Tom Knaus never thought his life would change so quickly.
Steve Paxton, the coach of the Missouri wheelchair basketball team, had had his eye on Knaus for a while. Then, one day before the teams’ preseason meeting, Paxton tracked down Knaus in the parking garage off Virginia Avenue and invited him to come to the meeting.
Knaus has been in a wheelchair since December of 2004 when he fell off a friend’s deck and broke his neck. Although Knaus played basketball in high school, his true passion was playing football. After the accident, Knaus said he thought his sporting days were over.
“I really didn’t think about any wheelchair sports,” Knaus said. “But basketball has just been so great.”
Knaus said that times were hard for him after the accident, but wheelchair basketball has helped him cope with everything.
“You have four guys out here that know exactly what your going through,” Knaus said of his teammates. “It has also helped me get back my competitive spirit.”
Knaus credits a lot of this to Paxton. Paxton, who is also paralyzed and in a wheelchair, said he looks at Knaus and sees himself at that age.
“We just have a lot of similarities,” Paxton said. “We were pretty close in age at the time of our accidents. We both played football and we’re from small towns. Both of us were brand new to wheelchair basketball and life in a wheelchair. You can just draw so many parallels.”
This is not only the inaugural season for the Tigers’ wheelchair basketball team (6-25), it’s the first season Knaus has played the sport.
“It’s a lot harder than I thought,” Knaus said. “It is harder to shoot and dribble than regular basketball.”
Paxton said that Knaus has learned a lot in his first season.
“He has come so far in such a short time,” Paxton said. “We have asked a lot out of him. Wheelchair basketball is very physically demanding. Most (basketball programs) don’t play three games in a such a short period of time. You just can’t measure how far he has come in the time he has been here.”
Since there are only eight teams in the league Missouri plays in, the teams travel to one of the teams’ campuses and compete there in a tournament. The teams will not play during the two to three weeks between tournaments.
The Tigers will play in their final tournament of the season this weekend at the University of Illinois. The Tigers are the No. 8 seed for the National Intercollegiate Wheelchair Basketball Tournament and will face No. 5 University of Arizona at 3 p.m. today. If the Tigers win, they will play at 10 a.m. Friday against No. 4 Edinboro University. If the Tigers lose, they will play at 10 a.m. Saturday in the seventh-place game.
Paxton said that his hopes aren’t set too high going into the national tournament.
“We just want to get a win at nationals,” Paxton said. “We’re good enough, and we have come pretty far, but we just haven’t been able to put it all together when needed. I think that that has a lot to do with the youth and experience on the team. Hopefully we bring everything together this weekend.”
Paxton said he is hoping this weekend will turn out to be something to build on for next year when the team doubles in size from five to 10 players.
“We have everybody on the team now coming back next year, plus we have five freshmen coming in,” Paxton said. “I just want this to be strong ending to this season, which will turn around and be a strong start for next season.”