Sportable Possums wheelchair rugby player Mandy Marchiano
Mandy Marchiano doesn’t mind being regarded as a zero. For rugby purposes, that is.
In the world of wheelchair rugby, competitors are assigned a classification number based on their level of impairment. The higher the number, the greater the athlete’s ability to manage the physical demands of the sport. Standard wheelchair rugby allows 8 points among each team’s four members; low-point wheelchair rugby allows a total of 3.5 points. Women get to subtract .5 from their classification number when playing on coed teams.
For Marchiano, whose C5 and C6 vertebrae were shattered in a car accident when she was 13, her classification of .5 drops to zero when she competes with men in low-point play.
“There aren’t many mixed-gender full-contact sports,” she says. “I feel powerful as a woman playing in a male-dominated sport. I can be aggressive, and I’m strategically useful, [because] you can use that half point for another player.”
Locally, Marchiano plays for the Sportable Possums, a low-point wheelchair rugby team that competes in tournaments along the East Coast. But on July 10, she’ll head to Birmingham, Alabama, as a member of the USA Low-Point Wheelchair Rugby Team. The team has gathered for the World Games, an international competition held in the summers following the summer Olympics.
In February, Marchiano and local teammate Joshua Burch tried out for the national low-point practice team, alongside nearly 40 other players. In the fall, Marchiano had tried out for the USA Wheelchair Rugby training squad with another Possums teammate, Josh Smith. While neither Marchiano nor Smith advanced in the fall, both Marchiano and Burch made the low-point practice squad this year.
Just joining a training squad is no small feat, Marchiano says.
“We were tested on full-court sprints, ball skills, how far we can inbound a ball — it felt very official,” she says. “This is the first low-point national team the USA has ever had, so there was a lot of excitement. We don’t want to let anyone down.”
Recently, Marchiano learned she had been selected to compete as an alternate at Worlds. Burch, who didn’t make that national team, will instead travel to the National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Tempe, Arizona, where he will compete in six different events.
Joshua Burch (at left) playing wheelchair rugby for the Possums
All three athletes — Marchiano, Burch and Smith — joined the Possums wheelchair rugby team when it was launched in January 2019, the latest addition to local nonprofit Sportable’s roster of activities designed for people with physical disabilities and/or visual impairments.
Marchiano came to Sportable in 2017. A lifelong athlete, Marchiano says she “dabbled in all the sports” as a child, particularly enjoying soccer and competitive cheering. At Sportable, “my first sport was rowing; that was a great experience,” she says. “It was where I met some of my first friends who were also in chairs, who I’m really close with now.”
She moved on to hand cycling, archery and kayaking until the Possums took shape.
“I came out to the first practice and haven’t stopped,” she says. “Sportable has the perfect slogan: ‘creating opportunities and transforming lives.’ Since starting with them, I’ve seen an improvement to my physical health — I’m stronger and function better with everyday tasks — but it’s the camaraderie of the team, too. I always loved being part of a team, and I’ve been happy to find that camaraderie as part of the wheelchair rugby team.”
Hunter Leemon, Sportable’s executive director, says Marchiano’s experience is one he hopes every Sportable athlete can enjoy.
“We talk about our value proposition in terms of health and wellness and physical attributes,” he says. “We want athletes to make physical progress so they can be independent and improve quality of life down the road. We also talk about community, being on a team, having peers who have the same trials and tribulations that you have. That speaks to that mental health piece. Social isolation is a big issue that our athletes face.”
The Possums’ competition season runs September to March, with a summer session for newcomers and those wishing to keep their skills fresh.
Marchiano notes that wheelchair rugby is different from traditional rugby, incorporating techniques from hockey and basketball. There are pick-and-roll plays and plenty of blocking, which is her role. Players use specially designed wheelchairs, composed of the lightest materials possible for speed and ease of navigation. Just before Worlds, Marchiano received her new competitive chair, which cost $11,000, half of which was covered by a grant from the Challenged Athletes Foundation, a nonprofit that supports athletes with adaptive equipment.
Marchiano and Burch say they will be better players from the experience of being on the training squad for the Worlds national team.
“It was really cool,” Burch says. “The players are really good, and several have been on the national team before, so there was a lot of experience and learning.”
“It has been so beneficial to play with people who have so much experience,” Marchiano adds. “They can teach me what to do, or give advice on chair skills and chair setup. As a new player, I want to soak it all in. The experience is where you learn everything. They have that experience and are kind enough to share it with me.”
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