The Greater Long Island Wheelchair Athletic Club’s Long Island Lightning Junior Wheelchair Basketball Club recently hosted its annual Junior Wheelchair Basketball Invitational at St. Paul’s Athletic Facility in Garden City.
Sponsored by the Nurse Practitioner Association of Long Island, the two-day competition featured the best junior wheelchair basketball players and teams in New York and the Mid-Atlantic. While the Junior Lightning did not win the championship, it did win the event’s consolation game.
The Long Island Lightning Junior Wheelchair Basketball Team strives to involve both male and female physically challenged youth in a program designed to provide competitive athletics and foster physical fitness. By stressing both teamwork and skill development, the Long Island Lightning Junior Wheelchair Basketball Team develops young people into active, competitive, and employable adults. Established in 2002, the Greater Long Island Wheelchair Athletic Club (GLIWAC) provides competitive athletics for the physically challenged. Its initial objective was to form Long Island’s first independently supported wheelchair basketball team, the Long Island Express. The club competes in the Eastern Wheelchair Basketball Conference of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. Besides wheelchair basketball, the club participates in many sports for the physically challenged: track and field, racing, tennis, swimming, sledge hockey and skiing. In addition to serving as active role models to the physically challenged, GLIWAC provides increased awareness information about athletics for the physically challenged to the general public.
