BAMA SENDS SEVEN TO BEIJING

TUSCALOOSA, AL. The University of Alabama Wheelchair Athletics program will send seven wheelchair basketball players to Beijing for the 2008 Paralypic Games. Three players were named to the U.S. Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Team and four players were named to the Canadian National team. The student athletes are training this summer with their respective teams at sites across the United States, Canada and Europe in preparation for the Paralympic Games in September.

Stephanie Wheeler (Norlina, NC), Mary Allison Milford (Magnolia, AR), and Alana Nichols, (Farmington NM) were named to the U.S. National Wheelchair Basketball Team while Katie Harnock (Toronto, CA), Tara Feser (Edmonton, CA), Cindy Ouellet (Quebec City, CA), and Janet McLachlan (Vancouver, CA) were named to the Canadian National Wheelchair Basketball Team.

Wheeler, a graduate student at UA, was also a member of the U.S. Team that took the Gold Medal at the Athens Paralympic Games in 2004. Nichols who graduates from Alabama this summer and Milford, a rising senior are also veterans of the U.S. Team that won the Gold Medal at the Pan Am Games last summer in Brazil

Feser, Harnock, Ouellet, and McLachlan represented the Canadians in winning the Silver Medal at the Pan Am Games last summer and will all be competing at their first Paralympic games. Harnock will be playing in her second season at UA this fall, while Feser, Ouellet and McLachlan will all be new to the Crimson Tide.

For more information about the University of Alabama Wheelchair Basketball or the Alabama Wheelchair Athletics program please visit: www.uads.ua.edu

For more information about the Canadian National Team please visit: www.cwba.ca

For more information about the U.S. National Team please visit: www.paralympics.teamusa.org