Men's Wheelchair Basketball

The sun has barely risen on a Wednesday in Tuscaloosa. In a college town that seems alive only when class is in session or when bars are open, 6 a.m. is a lonely time. In the northeast corner of the campus, a group of early risers congregates at the Student Recreation Center.

Some are there to get into shape, while some are there to make themselves feel better about not being in shape. They pair off into two teams and go at it. Broken jump shots and bodies that have seen better days play shirts and skins.

Talk of the good old days back on the high school junior varsity fills the air. Sneakers chirp, straining to keep ankles in line.

At the opposite end of the gym, real work is being done. A team readies itself for a long season ahead. Bodies strain, but they don't run. Heads hang, lungs gasp for air that is scarcer with every second a drill continues. A coach surveys his team, whistles between his teeth, ready to correct mistakes. Sneakers never chirp.

Sneakers do not chirp, because feet do not touch the ground. Conditioning under the watchful eye of head coach Miles Thompson is the Alabama men's wheelchair basketball team. Thompson wears a red T-shirt, light blue shorts and a black wristwatch. Red and white tennis shoes cover his feet. They don't chirp either.

The team members' arms grow weary, starting and stopping and turning and maneuvering the chairs made heavy by the bodies that occupy them. Six-minute periods are flanked by breaks of a minute and a half. The periods seem longer than they really are. The breaks seem shorter. Practice is a challenge, but it isn't a big deal. When you've dealt with real hardship, a tough practice is just a tough practice.

Nick Ford, an 18-year-old from Atlanta, is one of the freshmen. A birth defect resulted in his right leg being amputated right above the knee at a few months of age. Zach Haney has dystonia, a rare neurological condition that causes involuntary muscle contractions and spasms throughout his body. Zach Bobowski was born with spina bifida, which cause him to be paralyzed from the waist down.

Different circumstances brought them to this place, in the middle of a town that won't be awake for three more hours. What they take from this place is very much the same.

"This team is special," Ford said. "It's like a fraternity; like a brotherhood."

The 2006 season did not go like Thompson and his team wanted. A 15-26 record reflects as much. Alabama competes in a league with 10 teams, from Arizona to Wisconsin. Those teams are almost all established, proven programs.

Alabama's team was started last year, when Brent Hardin, director of Alabama Disability Sports, reached out to Thompson. Thompson, who had coached for many years at the Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham, jumped at the opportunity to take it to the next level. The project has been rewarding and challenging for the coach.

"We are part of history. We are creating history. That is exciting," Thompson said. "At the same time, trying to get this program to the level that it needs to be at is a big challenge. We play established teams, and we are just starting out."

A few minutes with Master

Sitting across the table from Master Hinkle can make even a big man feel small. A blue baseball cap turned backwards sits on top of his head, the word "Hinkle" embroidered in white across the band. He brandishes the Superman logo on the jewelry in his left ear and around his neck, but his brown arms are reminiscent of the Incredible Hulk. Only after he backs his wheelchair away from the table do you notice the underdeveloped legs he has been unable to use since the age of three. Now a 20-year-old college sophomore, Hinkle was paralyzed as a child in a car accident. He grew up in a wheelchair. It is a way of life for him now.

Hinkle took to power lifting in high school, convinced to turn the stares he got as a kid in a wheelchair into jaw-dropping wows.

"Everyone was looking at me," Hinkle said. "I decided to use those people looking at me to show them what I can do."

It worked. Hinkle holds six national records in power lifting for his weight class, including a bench press of 430 pounds. He also holds 10 records in track and six records in field for his performances at the National Junior Disability Championships in high school. His biceps don't lie.

As a student at Holtville High School just outside of Montgomery, Hinkle also played wheelchair basketball for Thompson at the Lakeshore Foundation. When Thompson took the job at Alabama, he convinced Hinkle to come along. This season will mark 14 years for Hinkle playing wheelchair basketball. He loves the competition, but he also loves the environment.

"I come from a smaller family," said Hinkle, who is the middle of three children. "This team is like having a whole different family. We spend so much time together, we get really close."

Hinkle shares the hardwood at Alabama with a former Lakeshore teammate, 18-year-old sophomore Blake Loftin. Loftin, from Mobile, has loved sports for as long as he can remember.

He played football, basketball and baseball as a child and even started on the diamond as an eighth grader at Mobile Christian School. That all changed when celebrating the Fourth of July when he was 13.

Malpractice

Loftin, who was raised by his father's parents on Fowl River just outside of Dauphin Island, was tubing behind a boat on the river on July 5 when a passing boat struck him. The force of the impact crushed the ribs on the left side of his body.

The boat's propeller gashed through his back, missing his heart by a quarter of an inch. A large scar remains to this day as a reminder, not that it is needed. His left lung was lost. His right leg was badly broken.

Loftin was airlifted to the hospital, where he spent 10 months, the first two in the intensive care unit. His body turned from 165 pounds of athletic muscle to less than 70 pounds of skin and bones.

His destroyed ribs were replaced with those fabricated by the doctors. A doctor put a cast on the broken leg prematurely, not allowing the leg room to swell. The result was circulation shutting down and the loss of his right leg, which was amputated at the knee in mid-September. A terrible accident had nearly cost him his life. Medical malpractice cost him his leg.

"That was probably the lowest I have ever felt," Loftin said. "The day I found out that I had to have my leg amputated was terrible. I was sad, depressed and angry. But you know, at some point you just have to let go of that anger. I wouldn't take away my accident if I had the chance. It's a big part of who I am, and I have a ton of friends now because of it that I wouldn't have had if not for it."

A prosthetic limb sits in place of the leg that Loftin lost after the boating accident. In a pair of blue jeans, the metal rod is hidden away, and only a severe limp exposes the damage done that day. Physically, Loftin has changed. Mentally, he is the same person, only maybe a little tougher.

"I'm the same person I was before the accident," Loftin said. "What happened happened and there is nothing I can do to change it."

Wheelchair basketball has been a salvation of sorts for the man with the shaggy brown hair. It is only natural for Loftin, who grew up aspiring to be a college athlete.

"It's kind of crazy how it worked out," Loftin said. "I was always such a jock and the accident happened and you think your dream is over, but here I am now, a college athlete. I'm incredibly competitive, and I don't know what I would be doing if I couldn't play wheelchair basketball. I'd probably be doing some bad stuff."

'Alive for a reason'

As an infant in South Korea, Joon Reid was abandoned at a bus station after his mother died and his father didn't want to raise him. Reid was taken to an orphanage, and at the age of 4, was brought to the United States by his adoptive parents, where he would live in Atlanta.

Later that year, Reid was in a single-engine Cessna piloted by his father when the plane went down on a flight from Atlanta to Dallas. His father and the copilot were killed instantly.

Reid lived, but he was badly burned. His left leg was destroyed beyond repair. In its place, a metal prosthetic sits today. His right leg shows scars from skin grafts. Reid was too young to remember the details of the accident. He also doesn't harp on how, at 4 years old, he could have lived, while the other two men in the plane died.

"People tell me that I am alive for a reason," Reid said. "I guess I believe that I am here for a reason, I just don't know what it is yet."

Reid, now 28, went to culinary school after high school and then went to work in the restaurant business. In the summer of 2006, he was approached by Thompson. Reid leapt at the chance to be a part of history.

"I was really tired of the restaurant business," Reid said. "Coach Thompson calling me and telling me about this team was such a blessing. It's like I have a second chance at life. It opened up a whole new set of doors."

Reid plans to graduate with a degree in education and said he hopes to return to South Korea to teach English while also playing in a wheelchair basketball league. It was all made possible by a team and a chance.

Improving on last season's record is a top priority for players and coaches. Winning and losing is the measure of success on the court. Wins and losses don't tell the whole story, though.

They don't tell the story of plane crashes, boat accidents, car accidents, spina bifida or dystonia. They don't tell the story of a family gained, a future realized or a boosted morale.

The Alabama wheelchair basketball team will go to work in the morning, when their peers are still asleep and their town is dead. It's a sacrifice they choose for a reward they couldn't do without.