January 8, 2017
USA Wheelchair Rugby 2017 National Team Training Squad
Doug Coil
The USA Wheelchair Rugby 2017 National Team Selection Camp was held January 4-8, 2017 at Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama. Twenty six athletes were invited to compete for the sixteen person squad which will train and compete in events leading up to the 2017 Americas Championship in late summer. The top two teams in the Americas Championship will earn an automatic qualification to the World Championships in 2018.
Upon the conclusion of the camp, congratulations is in order for the following sixteen athletes that were selected to the National Training Squad for 2017.
For James Adams, Jake Dailey, Joe Jackson, Talbot Kennedy, and Tim Vixay, it is the first national training camp selection and will join seven of the athletes that represented the team at the Olympics in Rio in September, 2016. Head Coach James Gumbert said that “25 athletes began this exciting journey this weekend. We have an incredible mixture of youth and veterans and we will constantly challenge ourselves to reinvent the wheel and have the best wheels possible.”
In April there will be another training camp at Lakeshore Foundation, the High Performance Management Organization for USA Wheelchair Rugby. At that camp, 12 athletes will be selected from the national training squad to compete at the Americas Zonals later this year.
For more information contact Jen Remick at jenr@lakeshore.org or 205.999.4944. This article is based on her USA Wheelchair Rugby article that was published earlier today.
Follow and support USA Wheelchair Rugby. The team was ranked first in the world prior to the Paralympics in Rio and came away with the Silver Medal at the Olympics. They are currently ranked second in the world by the International Wheelchair Rugby Federation.
USA Wheelchair Rugby 2017 National Team Training Squad
- James Adams, Atlanta, GA
- Chuck Aoki, Minneapolis, MN
- Clayton Brackett, Birmingham, AL
- Josh Brewer, Battle Ground, WA
- Jeff Butler, Austin, TX
- Ernie Chun, Phoenix, AZ
- Chad Cohn, Tucson, AZ
- Jake Daily, Belleville, IL
- Joe Delagrave, Chandler, AZ
- Lee Fredette, East Moriches, NY
- Joe Jackson, Chandler, AZ
- Talbot Kennedy, Atlanta, GA
- Chuck Melton, Richview, IL
- Alejandro Pabon, Arlington, TX
- Tim Vixay, Portland, OR
- Josh Wheeler, San Tan Valley, AZ