Two Regina wheelchair basketball players hope their years of experience playing together will help Team Canada get to the podium at the 2024 Paralympic Games.
This is the second time Nik Goncin, 32, and Garrett Ostepchuk, 24, will be teammates representing Canada at the Paralympics. Goncin made his Paralympic debut with Team Canada in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and was joined by Ostepchuk at the 2020 Games in Tokyo.
But their wheelchair basketball history goes back much further than that.
Goncin discovered the sport through a clinic at his high school after he lost his left leg to cancer at 15 years old. He said it opened his eyes to a new community.
“I didn’t think that there were a ton of people with disabilities living in the Regina area,” said Goncin, who is the co-captain of Canada’s national team. “I remember [we were] going to my first tournament and just being blown away — there’s legs everywhere, there’s chairs everywhere.
“These guys are banging chairs at 25 kilometres an hour. It’s a very adrenaline-filled sport.”
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Goncin first met Ostepchuk — who was born with muscular dystrophy — at a wheelchair basketball practice in Regina. Ostepchuk was in his early teens at the time.
“The first time I met G [Garrett], he came in walking on his hands into the gym with these halo kind of configurations around his legs,” Goncin said, explaining that Ostepchuk was recovering from surgery.
“If you had told me that, ‘You and this kid are gonna play on the Paralympic team,’ now two Paralympics in a row, I would have told you to kick rocks.”
Ostepchuk says wheelchair basketball changed his life.
“It’s just opening up my world to not feel so limited anymore,” he said. “In my daily mobility chair, I can’t do the same thing that I’m able to do in my sports chair.”
Ostepchuk earned a spot on the senior men’s national team in 2017. He also plays professionally in Spain, where he has more opportunities to compete against top-level talent. That’s harder to do in Canada because the country is so big and the best players are more spread out, he says.
“It’s a little harder to get consistent games like that,” he said. “Every game matters in pro and you are working the entire season to finish well.”
Goncin said it’s been fulfilling to watch Ostepchuk turn into a high-level player and inspire the next generation of Saskatchewan wheelchair basketball players.
“G is very much known for his feistiness that is borderline dirtiness,” Goncin said. “But I was in the same sort of role when I was his age and on the team.
“I feel like it’s a mini-me sometimes when he’s losing his mind out there.”
For his part, Ostepchuk joked that he learned all of his tricks from Goncin.
Ostepchuk said he is excited for his family to watch him from the stands in Paris because they weren’t able to attend the Tokyo Games due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“The first time they watched me play internationally was back in 2017, and they haven’t been able to come since,” he said.
While Canada’s national team dominated in the early 2000s, winning three golds and a silver from 2000 to 2012, they have had a harder time as of late, finishing eighth in Tokyo.
The Regina hoopers said the team’s goal in Paris is to improve on their sixth-place finish at the 2022 Wheelchair Basketball World Championships.
Goncin and Ostepchuk won’t be the only players with Saskatchewan ties looking to turn around Team Canada’s fortunes. Chad Jassman was born in Alberta, but spent time growing up in Burstall, Sask.
“Three of us being on the team, it’s never happened before,” Goncin said.
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He hopes that might inspire kids in their home province to give Para sports a try.
“I would like for even one person to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to go try wheelchair basketball, or better yet, I’m going to try a Para sport of some sort and find which one I like and get into it,'” he said.
“You’re only as limited as the limits you put up by yourself.”
Canada’s wheelchair basketball team kicks off its Paralympic campaign on Friday against hosts France. Tip off is at 10:15 a.m. CST.
