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'asketball teamGAINST steep odds, they led Canada's wheelchair basketball team to a gold medal at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney.On the weekend in Saint John, N.B., an underdog squad from a so-called have-not province of only one million people pulled off another upset over the much larger Ontarios, Quebecs and British Columbias of the sporting world, returning home yesterday with Manitoba’s first Canadian WheelchairBasketball League championship.The Manitoba Rolling Thunder, led by player/coach JoeJohnson and Travis Gaertner — two of the players who guided Canadato that gold medal in Sydney — rolled over the opposition en route to the province’s first ever championship with Johnson being named tournament MVP and Gaertner a tourney all-star.“You look at a province the size of Manitoba and you wonder how we can compete,” Doug Grant, executive director of Manitoba Wheelchair Sport, told the Free Press yesterday as the championship team flew home from New Brunswick. “It’s a lot more difficult for us because we just don’t have the population of wheelchair athletes to choose from.“But we develop our athletes from a very young age, he said. “Three of the four starters on that Paralympics team in Sydney (Johnson, Gaertner and Kenny Hall, who now lives in B.C.) started as 9- or 10-year-olds in our program.”Gaertner shot 67 per cent on his three-point attempts while Johnson was spectacular as one of the biggest men in the game. “I continually hear from the other athletes in my travels that he’s the best wheelchair player in the world,” Grant said.The Rolling Thunder beat Kitchener 55-51, edged Montreal 60-55 and got past New Brunswick 61-58, thenHIAmateurHiSceneV .Ol( ,M;
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