25 wheelchair-bound girls to dribble at 10-day summer basketball camp

CHENNAI: Afflicted with polio since childhood, Madhavi Latha, turned to swimming that helped her brave a life-threatening situation years later. A Paralympic swimming champion, she later went on to found the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India (WBFI) to encourage differently abled people with to engage in sports.
This June, Latha is organising a summer camp for wheelchair-bound girls in the age group of 16 to 24 to train them to play wheelchair basketball.
“My life was saved because of sports. I was 37 when I first learned swimming on my own to save myself from the debilitating effect of a compressed spinal cord,” said Madhavi. She went on to form the Paralympic Swimming Association of Tamil Nadu and also begun playing basketball. “I wish I had turned to sports earlier,” she remarked. She tells her tale to every parent of a differently abled child she meets so that they give importance to sports besides studies for their kids.
“The older men and women were willing to come forward and play, but not the kids,” she said. As the president of WBFI, most of her time goes in counselling parents about the positive impact of physical activity on the lives of their kids. “I can talk from experience. Sports help give more exposure and confidence to differently abled kids who are shy to do things alone. It improves the physical and mental strength of a differently abled person. I have been requesting parents to let their kids play and swim,” said Madhavi.
The ten-day camp for a team of 25 girls will be held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium from June 11 to June 21. The girls will be trained for the 2019 Under-25 Women World Wheelchair Basketball Championship. “If they perform well, they may go for the qualifiers of the championship. The cost of everything in the camp except the travel will be borne by us. Each year, we send men and women to play in the international tournaments despite challenges so that they can get an exposure of how teams across the world are trained,” she added.