Recap: Home Wheelchair Rugby Tournament
Tournament Recap from Blake Sebring:
The “Show Me” state showed it’s pretty g
reat at Wheelchair Rugby. The KC Revolution from Kansas City proved to be the class of the Turnstone 2021 Rugby Invitational on Nov. 13 and 14 at the Plassman Athletic Center. Despite strong challenges from the DASA Spartans from St. Louis and WASA from Milwaukee, the Revolution went 4-0.
The three squads produced the best matches of the tournament as Kansas City beat DASA 54-43 to close out the first day’s seven games. After WASA held off DASA 48-45 early the second day, KC edged WASA 46-44 in the tournament’s most-competitive bout. After the Revolution built a 37-32 lead after three quarters, WASA battled back to a 44-44 tie with 1:03 remaining. Brad Hudspeth scored the game-winning point with 53 seconds remaining, and a WASA turnover with 36.5 left set up an insurance point by speedy Kansas City phenom Talon Teague in the final seconds.
WASA finished the tournament 3-1 while DASA went 2-2. The MFB Thunder from Grand Rapids went 1-3 and the SR AbilityLab Bears from Chicago finished 0-4, playing the entire tournament with four players.
Playing with a roster of James Ezell, Victoria Grose, Tyler Sarrazine and Chuck Byndum, the host Turnstone Flyers played two exhibition matches going 0-1-1. The Flyers lost their first game against a squad made up of players from other teams 47-42 and tied the second bout 23-23.
Led by the consistent aggressive play from Katie Brim of Grand Rapids and Justin Hillman of Chicago, there were plenty of cobweb-clearing hits to knock the rust off during the first big tournament following the long pandemic interruption.
The all-tournament team includes Teague, Tony Durham and Brian Rollin from KC Revolution, Holden Kowalke and Kyle Peterson from WASA, Sarah Adam of DASA, Shawn Vogelgesang from MFB and Martin Ewing of SR AbilityLab.
Next Home Events:
January 29-30 - Jr. Wheelchair Basketball Regional
February 5-6 - Division I, II & III Wheelchair Basketball Invitational
February 19-20 - Sled Hockey League Event
March 5-6 - Power Soccer Invitational