Walking into the upstairs basketball courts of the Hamel Recreation Center, visitors were greeted with an unusual mix of sounds. Instead of the normal sneaker squeaks and ball bounces, a low and distant rumble carried across the gym.
Then, with a fantastic crash, a terrific sound of metal upon metal, followed by an appreciative cheer from a small crowd.
A demolition derby? Sort of…
A clash of knights in their suits of armor? In a way…
The truth is, in fact, somewhere in between those things. Across the gym, fifty athletes in wheelchairs roll across the courts, with as much swagger as any basketball player.
Last weekend, the University of New Hampshire played home to a different kind of sport, with a very different kind of athlete. A sport affectionately known to its fans as "Murderball".
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At noon on Saturday morning, the Northeast Passage Wildcats are gathered in the lobby of the Whittemore Center, waiting for the lacrosse practice-taking place on the courts upstairs to finish. Around the lobby, the typical assortment of athletic gear, gym bags and volleyballs, are piled with more unique equipment, such as spare wheels and power tools.
The Northeast Passage Wildcats are only in their second year of existence, but they are already an extremely popular part of the Northeast Passage program, which provides disability related health promotion and adapted spots programs to the New England disabled community.
The Wildcats came to Durham in 2006 after two other New England Quad Rugby clubs, Maine's Casco Bay Navigators and the Boston Pitbulls, decided to merge and meet each other in the middle to form one, regional team. They now practice once a week at the Hamel Recreation Center, and travel to tournaments on weekends. Prior to hosting the UNH Tournament, the Wildcats traveled to events in Connecticut and Florida. The Durham tournament, promoted as "Rugby Rampage", will host teams from New York, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Connecticut and Philadelphia.
The players run through all ages, from 15 to 45 and skill levels, and the teams are all co-ed. Currently, there are 15 players on the Wildcat roster, including two with ties to the University of New Hampshire.
Nate Loomis, 28, graduated with a degree in English in May and is a long time Durham resident; he graduated from Oyster River High School in 1997. It was in 1998, while body surfing during a family trip to the Caribbean, that Nate broke his neck after a rogue wave slammed him into the ocean floor.
Loomis had been involved with Northeast Passage for years, but only recently became involved in the rugby program.
"They've been inviting me for years to try it out," said Loomis. "As soon as you go watch one of these things, they're going to put you in a chair. They're not going to let you sit in the sideline."
Michael Wright, 20, is currently enrolled at the University as a freshman. When he was just 1 year old, a car accident took the use of his legs.
"I love it, I can't get enough of it," said Wright, who also just started playing rugby last fall. "Getting out there and hitting somebody, making big plays, I just can't get enough"
Though they are the team's rookies, both men are enjoying their experience with the team so far. They work out with each other two times a week in Durham, using the training facilities provided by the University.
"I think the best thing really is the camaraderie," said Loomis. "You learn so much form each other and, not just about rugby, but everyday stuff as well"
Their teammates have recognized their efforts as well. Veteran rugby player and team manager Bill Bouchard, 45 of Lewiston, Maine, is excited about the young blood that has come to his team.
"Nate and Mike came in here full steam ahead and work their butts off and advanced incredibly for one season," he said "Mike went to a clinic early in the season and came back with a lot of knowledge and Nate's been working his a** off."
Back in the lobby, some of the players are in their everyday wheelchairs, while others have already transferred themselves to their game chairs. The rugby chairs are customized to player that sits in them, and are built to suit its owner's skills. Small and fast players, who are typically scorers, have short chairs and rounded off fronts that cannot snag on other chairs. The bigger, slower defensive players have longer chairs so they can take up more space and impeded the progress of an offensive drive.
Loomis who has a larger build than most players on the team, is a member of the defensive line when he is on the court. "We do all the dirty work, hitting people and getting in the way," he says.
The customized rugby chairs have six wheels. Two of them are on the sides of the chair and are probably a rugby chair's most striking features. The large wheels used for steering and propulsion. The tops of the wheels are slanted inward towards the player and the spokes are covered with metal or Plexiglas plates for protection. The plates on the wheels of the veteran Wildcats are covered with dents and scratches from past impacts with opponents. Underneath the chair, four rollerblade wheels that move independently and allow for tight spins and direction changes.
"It makes all the difference in the world you get into a chair that's made for you, said Bouchard. "It makes pushing a breeze."
In the corner of the lobby, Jim Loomis, Nate's father and team equipment manager, takes a power saw to a chair, trying to remove a plate that he learned made the chair illegal to play with. Later, during the tournament, Jim and his pit crew will have to fix wheelchairs on the fly, replacing broken wheels or popped tires with speed and precision in order to get the team's best players back into the game.
The practice upstairs gets out and one-by-one the players make their way up to the basketball court in the Rec Center's single elevator.
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Not much transformation is required to change create a quad rugby court out of a regulation basketball court. The sidelines and end-lines stay as they are, while tape is put down to indicate a scoring box that is 26'6" wide and 5'9" deep at either end in the court. In order to score a point, a player must get two of his wheels across the back line of the scoring box while retaining possession of the ball.
Four players are allowed on the court at one time, but in order to ensure fairness between teams, and allow for all-ages-and-genders play, players are assigned a certain number of points based on their disabilities. Players are given a classification number from one of seven classifications ranging from 0.5 - 3.5. The 0.5 player has the greatest impairment, they have little hand and wrist movement and are more suited to play defense than to move the ball. Of those eligible to participate, the 3.5 player has the least impairment, and can probably open their hands and grasp the ball with less difficulty. At any one time on the court, the sum of a team's four players points cannot exceed 8, meaning that a team cannot place a player of least impairment on the court without placing a player of less ability. All players, however, must have some form of impairment in all four of their limbs.
The rules of the game urge ball movement, and players must advance the ball to half court in 15 seconds, while also bouncing the ball at least once every ten seconds. Contact betweens chairs is welcomed and encouraged, but physical contact between players leads to a foul and a trip to the penalty box for the offending team.
Rugby games are normally high-scoring affairs, with point totals reaching into the thirties and forties. Most of the points are scored on fast breaks and long passes, but if the defense is able to get back to defend their goal, the game becomes much more methodical.
The Wildcats first game is against the Philadelphia Eagles, a team that they have met in previous tournaments and have a long standing rivalry.
"If I had to beat anybody it would have to be Philly," said Bouffard, "We've had a huge rivalry all our years. In the beginning they kicked our a** and then for a couple years we beat them, now they're really good again."
"It would feel the best if we beat Philly," said Wright, "They are fast and really big…If we can stop the powerhouse that is Philly, then we'd be pretty happy."
In stands, a large group of friends and family gather to see their team play, many for the first time.
"It's mostly family and friends coming to watch, said Loomis. "Butut I think
when you tell people a bunch of guys in wheelchairs are going to crash into each other they seem interested."
The game was close early on, but in the second half the Eagle's star player, Rob Deller, a frost tipped battering ram of a rugby player, took the game over, targeted the inexperienced members of the Northeast Passage squad.
"He is a big man and he likes to hit you really hard when you're not looking," said Wright, who took a few licks from Deller during the game. "Getting hit hurts."
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Murderball originated in Canada in the late 1970s as an alternative sport for those quadriplegics who could not play sports like wheelchair basketball or sled hockey. Those sports required skills, such as constant dribbling or deft stick handling, which excluded quadriplegics with less function in their limbs.
It received its "rugby" designation due the sports physical nature and emphasis on contact, which also gave the sport its original, violent-sounding name. The game was rechristened to Quad, or Wheelchair, Rugby when it came to the United States in the late 1980s.
The sport became more visible after the very well received 2005 documentary Murderball, which profiled the players of the USA Wheelchair Rugby Paralympics team, and their rivalry with Team Canada. The popular NBC show Friday Night Lights followed in the documentary's footsteps by featuring a character, a star high school quarterback, who suffers a spinal injury and loses the ability to walk and only recovers his competitive spirit when he discovers the sport.
The film also revealed a different side of a community that is not often in the public eye. Instead of featuring weak and broken men and women who despaired over their lot in life, Murderball featured a group of strong, crass athletes who did not ask for sympathy or even respect.
That mood of independence and attitude was carried into this weekend's tournament, where none of the players were hesitant to talk about how they ended up in a chair and how they got involved in Murderball.
"I love that movie," said Wright. "It gives everybody a good perspective. It tells people we're out here and we're not fragile. We can go out there and compete. It really gives us that motivation to really show what we can do."
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Northeast Passage is the University of New Hampshire's official partner for certified therapeutic recreation. Their mission is to provide individuals with disabilities "the same freedom of choice, quality of life, and independence as their non-disabled peers." They facilitate a number of athletic programs for people with disabilities in addition to rugby, including sled hockey, golf, cycling and water skiing. Northeast Passage also provides equipment rentals, health consultations, and outreach programs to people with disabilities. According to their website, Northeast Passage served over 8,000 clients in 2006.
As the tournament moves on the Wildcats played two more games on Saturday, losing to the team from New York and beating Philadelphia in a late game.
The Wildcats ended the weekend with a win by forfeit on Sunday morning, as Philadelphia tried to play with an illegal chair. They ended up in third place for the weekend. But the players say the tournament is about more than winning.
"It's super-fun," said Loomis, "it's nice to see people crash into each other. But it was mostly a learning experience with most of the guys."
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