Jerry Terry was 13 when his stepfather shot him.

Terry’s alcoholic stepfather was enraged when his wife asked for a divorce.

Terry got caught in the middle of it and was the only one who made it out alive that day.

“I’m a paraplegic,” Terry, now 47. said.

“I’m a gunshot victim.”

After the shooting, which occurred in Lampasas, Texas, and the traumatic death of his mother, all Terry wanted was to be normal again.

He found wheelchair sports while at Baylor Rehabilitation Center in Dallas.

“It just helped me socially and just to get over a lot of things showing me I could be normal again because I was really involved in a lot of athletics before I got hurt,” he said.

Terry started playing wheelchair basketball when he was 16.

At the time, his only option was a local men’s team, which soon made him realize there needed to be a team for kids.

Today he coaches the Dallas Junior Wheelchair Mavericks and has won two back-to-back national titles.

He started the existing non-profit team in 2001 which practices every Saturday at the wheelchair-accessible Bachman Recreation Center.

The team, founded in 2001, started with eight team members.
Today there are about 60 kids on the team from ages 6 to 18.
The program continues to enrich the lives of many children.

The Dallas Junior Wheelchair Mavericks play four tournaments competing against four teams from Texas and Oklahoma and travel to National Championships each year.

“It really provides them the opportunity to play wheelchair basketball where they don’t have that opportunity in their own school systems,” Terry said.

Bouncing basketballs and laughter filled the large gymnasium near Bachmann lake at a recent Saturday basketball practice.

Since the first time Kari Banta picked up a basketball and tossed it at the hoop from her wheelchair, she was hooked.

That was seven years ago.

The best experience she’s had during her career was, “being able to go out and show people different things we can do. Just because we’re disabled, doesn’t mean we can’t do anything,” Banta, now 18, said.

She also plays on the Grapevine High School tennis team where she is the only disabled member.

Wheelchair basketball offers young people like Banta a new outlook on their future, Terry said.

Donations from organizations like the Challenged Athletes Foundation help provide sports wheelchairs for the players which can cost around $4,000.

“I think one of the biggest things for our program is providing the opportunity for kids to go to college because some colleges offer wheelchair basketball programs and that’s been kind of shifting our focus especially for our older kids,” he said.

Terry uses a “no pass, no play” rule for his team.

Like any other school sport, players must adhere to grade standards in order to participate. Some colleges have scholarships for wheelchair basketball.

When the scouts come out to the games they are looking for eligible athletes on Terry’s team.

Although the program focuses on the future of the players like Banta, it also improves the overall quality of their lives.

Because the children do not usually get the opportunity meet others like them, basketball gives them a sense of camaraderie and teamwork.

“They see they’re just like them, you know they have a lot of the same challenges,” said Jennifer Buysse, whose son Tyler, 13, was paralyzed from the waist down when he was only 6 years old.

Tyler has been playing for the Dallas Junior Wheelchair Mavericks for four years.

Zachary Steger, 13, who suffers from spinabifida played able-bodied sports until he joined the Junior Mavs five years ago. When he learned of the program, he decided to give wheelchair basketball a try.

“He came out here and he just smiled from ear to ear because he could now compete at what he knew how to do but he couldn’t compete with able bodies,” his mother, Tracey Steger, said at a recent practice. Zachary, she said, “just loves it, everything about it.”

For more information about the Dallas Junior Wheelchair Mavericks, visit www.dallasjrwheelchairmavericks.com.