Chad Jassman, Tokyo 2020 - Wheelchair Basketball Canada takes on Japan in a men's preliminary game. Dave Holland/Canadian Paralympic Committee

By Jesse Gill

Former Medicine Hat resident going for bronze in Wheelchair Basketball at Paralympics

Sep 6, 2024 | 2:46 PM

Chad Jassman reached the pinnacle of Wheelchair Basketball in his first Paralympics in London in 2012, taking home gold with Team Canada and looks to medal at this years event as Canada goes for bronze on Saturday.

After going 2-1 in pool play Canada, defeated the Netherlands in the quarter finals Tuesday, to set up their semi-final match with the power house United States on Thursday.

A 80-42 loss to the Americans sets up the bronze medal match with Germany at 8 a.m. MST on Saturday.

Jassman said he has enjoyed the experience of the games including living in the dorms at the Athletic Village in Paris.

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“Athlete Village has been pretty cool. The games have been awesome. Tons of fans out to the game. It’s been really exciting every game,” Jassman said.

“It’s a cool feel here.”

He admits the competition has been tight throughout the event.

“There’s so much parity between all the teams. There’s maybe Great Britain and USA are a step up on everybody, but the other six teams, they can all beat each other,” Jassman said.

“We just have everything clicking and firing on all cylinders at the right time, it seems like, and playing pretty well. Coming up, beating France to start that off, and we just kind of kept it rolling.”

Jassman said the excitement of playing against the host in the first game helped get Canada rolling.

“That’s the most exciting game of the tournament when you get to play the home team. Most of the fans were crazy, and, you know, you have like 16,000, 17,000 people cheering against you,” Jassman said.

“A couple of our guys, like Colin Higgins, he was saying he was nervous, that he just wanted to hit rim on his first shot, and then he hit, like, 12 points in a row without even touching the rim, I think,” he added.

“It’s incredible to see how it seems like nobody had the nerves. Not often we play in front of crowds like that, and everybody’s just sort of enjoying the experience of it.”

Canada met Germany in pool player during the Paralympics and came out with a 68-52 win.

Jassman expects this match to be really close.

“They’re going to make some adjustments on things that we did to them. I would also say that they didn’t have their best game,” Jassman said.

“We played them about a month ago when they were up on us by like 30 at the half or something. They’re a really good team, and if they’re clicking, it’s going to be a tough game to win,” he added.

“I’m pretty confident that we can pull it off, especially if we can keep playing the way we are playing. It’ll be fun.”

Jassman says winning the game would be a great way to finish potentially his last Paralympic games.

“It would be huge to me if we could win the bronze and bring that home. We won gold in London, and we haven’t even been to a semifinal since then,” Jassman said.

“It’s been a lot of hard years of just battling, trying to build our ability way back to this,” he added.

“We’re kind of underdogs in every game, and we just kind of have that underdog mentality, and we just keep coming out and performing and doing what we can. Things just happen to keep going our way.”

Jassman is hopefully he’ll head back to Canada with a medal, but proud of what the team has accomplished.

“Hopefully I have something to show for it. Even if we finish, you know, anything in the top four is above what we expected,” Jassman said.

“We’re proud to be there. But yeah, we’ll give it our all tomorrow. Hopefully we can pull it off.”