Ex-Medicine Hat resident competing for Canada in wheelchair basketball at Paralympics

Wheelchair Basketball has been a huge part of his life since.

“I’m really blessed that it’s taken me all over the world and I’ve had a long career of getting to see things that I never would have had a chance to had I not been in the accident,” Jassman told CHAT News on Monday.

“It was real tragic for me in the beginning and I was obviously going through some depression, but I came out on top and I’m a super happy guy and just having a lot of fun with what I do and just loving life,” he added.

“I happened to fall in love with wheelchair basketball, it also happened to be a really good fit for my disability and my mentality and stuff. I stuck with it for a long time. And here I am still going. Who’d have thought this many years later?”

Jassman said he started the sport in 2005 playing locally in Calgary, where he had moved to following the accident.

He was invited to his first tryout with Team Canada in 2006, just barely missing out on the opportunity to represent the team at the Paralympic games in Beijing in 2008.

He became a full time member of the national wheelchair basketball program in 2009.

Jassman said his career has gone fast.

“When I first started, I was the young puppy on the team, full of energy. Now I’m one of the old guys on the team. Time has really flown by,” Jassman said.

“Experience goes a long way in our game. Because we can’t move laterally, just being smart in your position and being able to back people and put them out of position really matters a lot,” he added.

“I just happened to be really, really fast in a wheelchair. Now that I’m an older guy, I’m not quite as fast.”

Jassman also enjoys the physical aspect of the sport.

“A lot of people haven’t seen wheelchair basketball and have a lot of misconceptions about it,” Jassman said.

“It’s like a real crash and bangin’ sport and it’s a blast. Usually, if we can get people to watch one game, they’re like, oh, wow, I’m gonna definitely tune in and watch another one like that.”

Jassman said he enjoys that about half the players that play wheelchair basketball have no disability.

“We encourage able-bodied players to play with us. It runs on a point classification system, depending on your disability. And so it’s not like you’re stealing minutes from me by you coming out and playing,” Jassman said.

“It just makes us that much better that you have inherent advantages that I don’t have. Me playing against somebody who’s able-bodied and a great basketball player, once they get the chair skills down, it just pushes us to be at that next level.”

The highest classification a player can be is is a 4.5. The lowest classification you can be is a 1.0. It goes in 0.5 increments. I’m a 1.5. So I’m typically one of the more disabled players on the court,” Jassman said.

“My chair setup, I’ll sit six, eight inches lower than a lot of the players just because I don’t have the core balance. So you sit a lot lower and you play more like a guard role where somebody who’s more able-bodied, they’re going to sit the maximum height that’s allowed,” he added.

“You want to be as tall as you can, but I just wouldn’t have the balance to do it. It’s cool that it has such a range of disabilities that all play on the same team and you all have a role and you have to work together to achieve that.”

The five players on the court at a time can only have 14 points.

“You just got to always be doing the math and make sure you have a playable lineup,” Jassman said.

“It’s neat in the way that we all have different roles to play. A lot of what I do is I’m like trying to bash and smash holes so that the bigger players can follow me and use my seals and picks and stuff like that to get easier shots,” he added.

“The older I get, kind of the better shooter I’ve become. I just kind of sometimes lay in the weeds for a little bit. They’re going to obviously help off me that I’m not the number one threat. Then I just have to knock down open shot.”

Jassman is thankful for the support he has received throughout the years from those in the Medicine Hat area as this looks to be his final Paralympics.

“Oh, it’s been huge. It was a huge advantage for me being from a small town like that where obviously something bad happens to you and everybody pulls together,” Jassman said.

“I had a lot of support from both Medicine Hat and Burstall. A lot of people knew me as Rory the Tiger. So they kind of like followed my career and kind of keep checking in how I’m doing,” he added.

“It’s pretty cool. I think it’s a lot easier than if you live in some big center where you’re just another guy, who just happened to get hurt, where people took a really personal approach to it because they knew of me or knew me and kind of followed my career.”

Jassman and team Canada played in four pre tournament games in Germany starting on Aug. 13 before they arrived in Paris on Monday.

“We were on a bus for about seven, eight hours and got here to Paris. We’re in a hotel for about two days here now and then move into the village, I believe, on the 22nd,” Jassman said.

The Paralympic Games begin Aug. 28 in Paris.

Jassman said the competition has tightened up at the games compared to prior years.

“Normally the Paralympics has 12 teams and it shrunk down to eight. That made it harder. The whole world has gotten so much better,” Jassman said.

“When I first started my career, you could basically say the four teams who are going to end up on top, and that usually panned out that way. Now you have probably 14 teams around the world that can all beat each other,” he added

“I would argue the top two teams who had a little bit of gap on everybody have dropped a little bit and all the bottom have come up. So it’s going to be really exciting. If anybody has a bad game, any team can beat them. It’ll be super fun.”

Jassman still considers Canada to be a bit of an underdog at the tournament.

“I would probably rank us seventh or eighth out of the eight teams there. But it’s anybody’s tournament, if we just play really good games, we know we can beat any team there,” Jassman said.

“It’s possible we could win a medal. It’s possible we could lose every game just because how tight it is.”

Jassman is happy to be playing again with one of the best to ever play the sport.

“There’s four of us who are still on the team. Four old guys still kicking around who won a gold medal in London. We have Patrick Anderson, who’s arguably the best player in the world,” Jassman said.

“He’s like the Wayne Gretzky of wheelchair basketball. This is his final games as well. He’s had a phenomenal career and multiple gold medals,” he added.

“Learning from guys like that who are clearly the best players in the world, it just makes you that much better.”

The Canadian Mens Wheelchair Basketball teams first game is is Aug. 30 with a game against host France.

“I’m super excited for that one. It’s always super fun to play against the host team, getting booed by the crowd and seeing the Olympics and we’re playing the same place,” Jassman said.

“It seems like a great atmosphere in there. So, yeah, it’ll be super fun.”

by Jesse Gill

Ex-Medicine Hat resident competing for Canada in wheelchair basketball at Paralympics

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