Fast, noisy and tactical: meet the coach of the Dunmere Dragons, by Tom Ashby

An original contemporary interview.

Marisa Okonjo did not plan to become a basketball coach. In 2014, a car crash on the way home from work left her with a spinal injury, and she spent five months in hospital. ‘A physiotherapist wheeled a ball over to my bed one afternoon and told me to throw it at the wall,’ she says. ‘I was furious with her. Two years later I was playing for my county.’

Today she runs the Dunmere Dragons, a wheelchair basketball club that trains every Thursday evening in the sports hall at Dunmere Leisure Centre. Anyone can join: about a third of the squad are not disabled at all, but play in chairs alongside their teammates. The youngest player is nine and the oldest is sixty-one.

The biggest obstacle, Marisa says, is money. A proper sports wheelchair, with angled wheels that stop it tipping over during sharp turns, costs around £3,500. The club owns fourteen, most of them bought with money raised through quiz nights and a sponsored push along the seafront.

‘People come to watch expecting something gentle,’ she laughs. ‘Then the first two chairs collide at full speed and the whole crowd gasps. It is fast, it is noisy, and it is the most tactical sport I know.’

Last season the Dragons won their regional league for the first time. Marisa’s next ambition is to take a junior team to the national championships.

(a) How long did Marisa spend in hospital after the crash? (b) Why do sports wheelchairs have angled wheels? (c) Name one way the club raised money to buy its wheelchairs.