#university of texas at arlington
Josie Aslakson is a 25 year old paralympic wheelchair basketball player for Team USA.
Josie was born in Edina, a small city in the state of Minnesota. While born able-bodied, she sustained a complete spinal cord injury in a car accident at the age of 5. Despite receiving excellent hospital care, this meant she would be completely paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of her life and that she would never have any feeling in her legs again.
Fortunately, the accident didn’t cause any other medical issues and Josie grew up in excellent health. Obviously, growing up as a wheelchair user comes with some challenges from time to time, but while however she sometimes felt sorry that she couldn’t participate in everything her friends and classmates did, Josie always stood out with her extremely positive attitude!
At the age of 13, Josie was practicing at one of her archery lessons, and the basketball coach(who was training at the same time) pushed her to try basketball. The coach immediately spotted that Josie had quite some talent and encouraged her to give it a go.
In the beginning Josie played together with the ‘regular’ basketball team of Jordan High School, which she attended and contrary to what you might expect, she matched the level of her teammates very well and even turned out as one of the top players of the team!
After high school, Josie switched to the womens wheelchair basketball team of the the University of Texas at Arlington, the Lady Movin’ Mavs. This is where her talent fully blossomed and in 2014, she was selected for the World Wheelchair Basketball Championship in Incheon, South Korea where she and her teammates finished second(after Australia). In 2018, she then played for Team USA in the World Championships in Hamburg, Germany, where she finished 6’th.
Now, Josie is preparing for her first ever Paralympic Games, which will start in a couple of weeks in Tokyo, Japan! Good luck Josie
If you’re interested, you can check out Josie’s Instagram page. I can also really recommend the great interview Josie recently had with Palms to Pines Parasports⬇️
Good luck to Josie and Team USA!
Elizabeth Becker is a very talented 21 year old wheelchair basketball player from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Elizabeth has been a wheelchair user for all her life because of spina bifida myelomeningocele. Myelomeningocele is a congenital condition in which there grows a malformation in the spine during pregnancy, causing damage to the spinal cord. Because of this, Elizabeth has been paralyzed from her waist down for all her life and she never had any feeling in her legs. She also has a slight degree of scoliosis.
As a child, Elizabeth came into contact with a woman who asked her if she had ever played wheelchair basketball and if she might be interest in giving it a try. At first, she wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about this idea, but after some encouragement from her parents, Elizabeth visited a training of their local team, the Charlotte Rolling Hornets. Totally unexpected, she immediately loved it and it soon became apparent that she even had quite a bit of talent for it.
After graduating from high school, Elizabeth went on to follow a study in Broadcasting at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she had the opportunity to join their collegiate wheelchair basketball team, the Lady Movin’ Mavericks.
In 2019, Elizabeth represented the National U25 Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Team. Later that year, she and her team became world champion in the IWBF’s Women’s U25 Wheelchair Basketball World Championships in Thailand!
Elizabeth’s great performances in the U25 team eventually contributed to a place for her in Team USA, and if all goes well, she will represent her country in the upcoming Paralympic Games in Tokyo later this year!
If you’re interested, you should absolutely check out this great interview Elizabeth had with the “Women in Sports” podcast, where she talks about the sport of wheelchair basketball and what it means to her;
