The Weatherboys get rocked in wheelchair rugby

Wheelchair rugby is a full-contact sport, and when we say full-contact, we mean it. We went out to the University of Michigan to learn the game from some of the best in the world, and as it turns out, being good is a whole lot harder than we thought. Oh, shoot! Ow! Oh! Wait, are we losing already? Okay, so who thought this would be a good idea? Well, it wasn't Derek. Actually, I had to convince our sweet prince to even do the dang story. I will let you decide who was right or wrong. Please say yes, my sweet prince. Yeah, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea. And I guess I don't know why other than it feels like, would it be insulting if me, as an able-bodied person, got in a wheelchair to play against you? So have you ever swam in a pool? Yeah. Have you ever gone to swim in the ocean? Yes. Did you feel like you were offending fish by doing so? Point taken. The chair is not a costume. It is equipment. Hockey has skates. Wheelchair rugby has sport chairs. Adaptive sports are not sports for people with disabilities. They are merely sports that are more accessible to and inclusive of more people. So if you can sit, you can play. But we got to learn. And for that, we have the literal best. So I have four Paralympic medals, which is the most of any American ever. And then I have five World Championship medals, which is also the most of any American ever. Two gold medals at World Championships, one silver, two bronze at Worlds, and I have three silvers and one bronze and hopefully a gold come L.A. You've got to stop talking. The piece isn't long enough to have all of that in there. Chuck here, fresh off helping Team USA capture their first World title since 2010 at the 2026 Wheelchair Rugby World Championship. He was earning MVP, obviously. Now, these are LeBron James-level accomplishments, so shame on you for not knowing the name Chuck Aoki. He is a sweet but savage man. The slightly way to put it is kill the man with the ball. Oh, God! So these are two different wheelchair rugby chairs. Derek is in what we call an offensive chair. Alan's chair's meant more for defense in theory. Would you stop ramming me? We haven't even started yet. We started what? I'm stuck. Oh, look what you've done now. I'm going to hit him, hit him, and let him do it. Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, jeez. Oh, my gosh. OK, boys. OK. You ready to go? Yes, yes, coach. Real easy to start. You're just going to push down and back. We're going to do it two times. First time, nice and easy, trying to get your arms loose. The second time, you're going to do as fast as you can. However, don't forget that ball. You have to dribble every eight seconds. Go. There we go. Yeah. You're doing good. Oh, look at that dribble. Not bad, not bad. How's it back there, Alex? This is just nice and easy. That's a lot more tiring than I thought it would be. Ready, go! Oh, jeez. Don't forget the dribble. I'm going as hard as I can, are you? Yep. You're doing good, boys. Oh, shoot. Oh, what a camera. Camera. Nice. Oh, my gosh. You guys got this. I got nothing but his backside. OK. Oh. We got to work on your passing now. How you doing? You doing OK? You're breathing on it. What I want you guys to do now. Because I want you to start pushing towards the baseline, but you need to pass the ball back and forth while you do it. The one thing we can't do in a chair is go sideways. No, no, push forward. Turn your chair. Oh. Turn. Ready? Here we go. How many passes, coach? Let's get as many as you can. Let's try to get three. Oh, nice. Oh, yeah. Oh, one more. Bad throw. Come on. Catch forward. Hot 27. That's nice. Leave me. Oh, wow. Leave you? Yeah, leave me. I didn't teach you guys how to pick the ball up properly. So here, we'll do that next. Chuck, I'm tired already. We have just gotten started. This is a bad time. We've done this for like three seconds. We should have taken off our undershirts. So watch. So if the ball's on the ground, what you do is you just put it on your wheel, and it comes up to you. All right. Come on, brother. You got it. Oh. Hey. That's pretty good, right? OK. Think you're going to get it. There we go. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. So that makes a lot of sense, but I feel like that takes some practice. Yeah, it does. It does. It's game time. What do you want your nickname to be? Oh, yeah. Do we get cool nicknames? No, you can pick a team name. You got to pick a team name. Oh, team name. That is Weatherboys. The Weatherboys. Yeah. Yeah. One, two, three. Weatherboys. Oh, he didn't even look at us. Oh, you're a lady. Wait, are we losing already? That was a point. Nice, Derek. Here we go. Alan, what are you doing? You know, they said rarely are there turnovers in this game. Ah, where did you come from? Okay, nice throw! And a goal, Paul! Current Chuck may be a savant on wheels, but it is important to note, once upon a time, he sucked too. My first ever practice, and I literally got beat up for two hours straight. I didn't really know what I was doing, right? They sent me flying, and I was just like, this is awesome. Like, I love it. Okay, we shift from Chuck Damascus back to Dr. O, who found adaptive sports a little bit later. He'd been an athlete his entire life, competed in D1 track and field at Stanford. Then a spinal cord injury changed how he competed. After I had an injury, I didn't know that I could still play sports. I didn't know adaptive sports existed. I wanted to maintain physical activity and physical fitness. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to get out there and play sports with people that I enjoyed interacting with. And I guess that's really all this is. You know, a bunch of people who otherwise might not ever share a court, sharing one. Yeah, nice. Adaptive sports are for everyone. That those sport chairs do not belong to disabled people. They belong to the sport of wheelchair rugby. That was good teamwork. Oh yeah, defense, right, right, right, right. I should probably triple it. And lucky for us, none of this requires actually being any good at it. The Weather Boys, Fox 2 News.