Community Heroes: Rollin' Tigers coaches lead a South Carolina wheelchair basketball team

The team breaks the huddle and takes the court with a shout: “Roll, Tigers!”

The court was in Birmingham, Alabama. The team is the Roger C. Peace Rollin’ Tigers youth wheelchair basketball team.

Coaches Jeff Townsend and Lindsey Metz and their dozen players, ages 5-13, competed in the Southeastern Junior Division Conference tournament the last weekend in February.

They returned to the Upstate with the championship trophy.

"It was an exciting weekend to be sure," Townsend says.

Townsend and Metz have coached the Tigers since the team’s beginnings in 2016.

Both know their way around the sport. Both have given extensively of their time to help build the team.

For their dedication and support of the team and the players and adaptive sports in general, Townsend and Metz have been selected as Greenville News Community Heroes.

The Community Heroes program, sponsored by the Greenville Federal Credit Union, is a way of recognizing generous and selfless work by those among us who make our community a better place.

Townsend teaches Sport Management classes in Clemson's Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department. He also works with the university’s small, but growing adaptive sports program, which currently includes wheelchair tennis and 7-per-side soccer for individuals with Cerebral Palsy, as well as community recreational programming like water skiing, and hosting the Palmetto Games, a multi-sport competition for athletes with a physical disability or visual impairment.

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Born with spina bifida, Townsend grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, using a wheelchair as he became an accomplished athlete. In high school, he played wheelchair basketball on an adult team because there was no youth team. He attended the University of Illinois, a college wheelchair basketball power, where he was an Academic All-American.

Metz, a Child-Life Specialist with Prisma Health in Greenville, was in a car accident when she was 11 that left her with a spinal-cord injury.

She had loved playing basketball before the accident, but afterward, “I wasn’t really interested in any sort of adaptive sport,” she says. “Anything that had the word 'wheelchair’ in front of it, I was not interested. I didn’t think that it would be as competitive, as exciting.”

After a couple of years without sports, she says she was ready to try. She and her father drove to Charlotte, then the closest place with a youth wheelchair basketball program – she started playing at age 13 and hasn’t stopped since.

“At the first practice, the thing that hooked me was that for the first time in two years, I wasn’t different,” she says. “I wasn’t anything special because of my disability. We were all in the same place. The second thing was that I got to play basketball again. It was just so exciting to have that camaraderie as a team and to be competitive and to really push myself.”

After playing with the Charlotte team all through high school, it was on to college at the University of Alabama. Metz played on Crimson Tide teams that rolled into the National Wheelchair Basketball Association women’s collegiate championship game each of her years in Tuscaloosa, winning the championship twice. Like Townsend, Metz was named an Academic All-American.

When they offer players coaching instruction, they know what they’re talking about.

Parents of the Rollin’ Tigers players say the coaches’ dedication and winning attitude has been a godsend for their children.

“For kids with disabilities, it is difficult to have a competitive sport in our area,” says Angela McWhorter. “As a parent of one of these kids, we are grateful that both coaches dedicate their time, so our child will have the opportunity to grow, not just in sport, but in life.”

Kathleen Noblitt said that her son first met Metz soon after an injury left him paralyzed on his right side.

“She encouraged our sports-loving 6-year-old to come play basketball,” she says, adding that Metz, Townsend (and his wife, Jasmine, a Clemson professor and “dedicated gear schlepper”), are "incredible champions for the adaptive sports community. We are so thankful for them and people like them who have made these opportunities available to our child.”

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Townsend says it’s the players who bring him inspiration and joy and that he’s constantly impressed by “just how much these kids want to compete. They are very hungry to learn and they do their best.”

There is a camaraderie among athletes from all the teams, a shared experience that few other people can truly understand, Townsend says.

“These tournament weekends are special. They build a bond with the opposing teams in Charlotte, Atlanta, Raleigh, wherever it is,” he says. “They have great friendships off the court. But when they get on the court and they go against that team, then it's time to buckle down, do their best and try and win.”

The Rollin’ Tigers have gotten better at that each year. This season, the team is 19-1 heading into the Junior National Championship tournament in Wichita, Kansas, March 24-26.

McWhorter says that some players and their families will be flying to Wichita, and some will make the 16-hour drive to Kansas. They all plan to arrive the day before the tournament begins.

As the only youth wheelchair basketball program in South Carolina, the team draws players from all over the Upstate and beyond.

That requires a big commitment from parents and players -- as well as the coaches. Except for one tournament the Tigers hosted at the Clemson-Central Recreation Center, the team had to travel extensively for weekend tournaments. All but four of the team’s 20 games this year have been out of state.

From October until March, weekly practices at Greenville’s St. Matthew Methodist Church also require travel for many of the players and their families -- and Townsend.

Over and above travel, it can be an expensive sport. The cambered-wheel sport chairs that the players use are custom fitted and cost $3,000 to $3,500 each -- not covered under most health plans, Townsend says. Not to mention that the players are growing children and often need a new chair every couple of years.

Townsend says that the Roger C. Peace Rehabilitation Center helped with the team’s startup and has supplied a new sport wheelchair each season. The team is gradually building up a stock of chairs that players can have fitted and then use on the court.

McWhorter says that it costs about $30,000 to keep a team operating for a year – so fund-raising and applying for grants is a year-round effort.

After this season ends, preparations for the next one will begin – this year including setting up a second team. Several of the Rollin’ Tigers players have turned 14 or are about to, and will no longer be eligible to play in the Prep classification.

Townend says that a Varsity-level Rollin’ Tigers team, for players ages 14 through high school will take the court next season, as well as the Prep team for younger players.

Starting the Varsity level team is a little daunting, but also exciting, Metz says. When the team began in 2016, all the players were age 10 or younger and just beginning to learn the game. Most had never played any kind of sport at all.

Now, the hope is that the Varsity players will continue to progress to the point where they can consider moving to the next level, playing in college or on adult teams.

“It’s a huge privilege that we have to be part of these kids’ lives and to see the impact that the sport can have. It’s just humbling,” Metz says.

If you’d like to help with the Rollin’ Tigers’ expenses, text RollinTigers to 41444. That will take you to the team’s donation page, which is managed by Prisma Health Philanthropy.

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Community Heroes: Coaches lead a SC wheelchair basketball team