Murray scores big for wheelchair basketball team

The first time Becca Murray witnessed competitive wheelchair basketball, her reaction could be summarized in three words: Oh my gosh.

That was in the mid-90s. And Murray, now 20, is one of the top wheelchair basketball athletes in the country. But at the time, the sport didn’t look so easy.

“When I watched the older people, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can tumble and fall and do this,’ ” she said. “It looked so hard.”

Truth is, she was right. It is a hard sport. But Murray is making it look a lot easier.

As the second-youngest member of the national team, she scored 25 points and made the winning basket against Germany with 19 seconds remaining in the title game of the World Championships last month.

Murray has also helped the United States win a gold medal at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, in addition to a first-place finish at the Parapan American Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2007. She very well could be part of the U.S. team that competes in the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

She said she considers the Paralympic Games “the highlight” of her basketball career to this point, but making the decisive basket in the World Championships was pretty special, too.

“We just worked the pick-and-roll and luckily enough, one of the Germans jumped out on Christina (Ripp),” Murray recalled of her winning shot. “So it worked out really well. … The whole experience was awesome. I loved the team this year.”

The name of the winning play was “Wisconsin,” because both Murray and Ripp hail from the Badger State. Murray was raised in Germantown, Wis., but currently goes to school at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she’ll be a sophomore in the fall.

As a freshman, Murray helped start the Warhawks’ women’s wheelchair basketball team. Along with Tracy Chynoweth, a former coach of the UW-W men’s wheelchair team, Murray helped recruit players, set up competitions and generate interest around campus.

“It went pretty well,” she said of the initial season. “I think our first year we had seven college girls and three high school players from Southeast Wisconsin. Now we have 10 girls that are full-out college students.”

The Warhawks play games against the few other NCAA programs that exist — Alabama, Illinois, Arizona and Edinboro (Pa.). They also face recreational teams from Chicago and Pittsburgh in a schedule that features approximately 20 games.

“We don’t have very much money that we can give (the athletes),” Murray explained, “so they basically come if they can afford it. We can give a little bit of money, but not full scholarship rides.”

For Murray, she plays for the love of the sport. Six years after being born with spina bifida, she began playing recreationally. Spina bifida is a birth defect that involves the incomplete development of the spinal cord. 

When she was about 11, she started playing competitively. She also played hockey and baseball growing up, but ultimately chose to stick with basketball — and that decision has paid off handsomely.

“If I wasn’t so lucky to have the people I have around me, helping to finance me to go play overseas like the Paralympics and the World Championships, I don’t think I’d be able to stick with basketball,’’ Murray said. “But I’ve been able to stick with it and travel everywhere.”

Murray credits her family, friends, coaches and physical therapist for helping her reach this point in her career. Since she is surrounded by so many other people in wheelchairs, it has created a support system that ensures she never feels sorry for herself. This sentence is a little awkward –reads as if she would feel sorry for herself if she was surrounded by able-bodied people.

Her teammates at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games were particularly supportive to Murray, who was only 18 on a team full of women in their 20s and 30s.

“I thought (being the youngest girl on the team) was going to be hard,” Murray said. “It’s one big family and nobody gets left out. I didn’t even feel like one of the younger players.”

Over the next several years, Murray has her eyes set on more hardware — both at the collegiate and Paralympic level.

“One goal I have is to win a national championship with the Whitewater wheelchair basketball team before I leave,” Murray said. “That would be awesome. And then to win another gold at the 2012 Paralympic Games. I wasn’t there for the first gold (in 2004), but that would be three times in a row we won the Paralympic gold medal.”

For now, Murray is majoring in special education with a minor in coaching. She is hoping to one day coach a wheelchair basketball team of her own, so that maybe someone else can have an “Oh my gosh” moment right in front of her eyes.

“Opportunity’ would be one word I would use to describe (what wheelchair basketball has meant to my life),” Murray said. “It’s given me the opportunity to meet a whole bunch of wonderful people — some of my closest and best friends, an opportunity to travel the world, an opportunity to go to college.”

Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Drew Silverman is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.