A Waikino basketballer is making history as he joins New Zealand’s inaugural Whaikaha men’s basketball team.
Twenty-year-old Todd Maitland was named vice-captain of the newly-formed team in September.
It is New Zealand’s first men’s team for high-functioning athletes with intellectual disabilities, and the players will be competing in Australia from January 28 to February 2 at the Ivor Burge Men’s State Championships.
“There is no such thing as disability. There is ability within all disabilities,” Todd said.
“My team in New Zealand all has the same attitude and we practice and play to achieve our dreams together.”
Todd’s mother, Tina, who is also the assistant coach, said the team had been four years in the making.
“It’s been a massive road to get this up and running. And then trying to round up people in New Zealand is another hard thing… But there’s so many people that are fantastic athletes,” she said.
“We’re pioneering history right now.”
Todd said he was excited to be heading to the tournament, and although they were aiming to place in the top three, he said what he was looking forward to most was playing.
“It doesn’t really matter if you win or lose. It’s just basketball, really,” he said.
“[I’ll] just keep going until my body’s done.”
Todd, who has autism, developmental delay syndrome and verbal dyspraxia, will be playing centre at the championships. Despite also being blind in one eye, he’s a skilled player.
Tina said the team had a number of strategies for working around his and the other players’ needs.
“Todd had full eyesight until about May, 2017, when the optic nerve detached itself from sending the messages to the eye. We noticed he went from being able to shoot three pointers outside the circle line to not being able to do that. So now he relies completely on getting up close and layups and charging in and stuff like that,” she said.
“But we work around it. We know [his] good eye. We know the strong side of the court to go up on and not the weak side of the court. So we play that to an advantage as well.”
The team also uses a lot of visual aids such as whiteboards, Tina said, to help the players with developmental delays.
Like any other sports team though, it’s training and camaraderie that has been key to bringing the players together.
“We’ve done a couple of big training things down in Wellington where everyone’s come together, from Friday night through to Monday, just training,” Tina said.
“And they cheer each other on. They’re really supportive of each other… any negativity, we’re quite happy to put people on the plane and send them home. We’re very, very strict.”
The team of 10 players and four management staff will spend a week in Ballarat, Victoria for the tournament, getting in some sightseeing along the way. And although life will return to normal once they return, Todd still has plenty to keep him busy, as he looks ahead to trials for next year’s Virtus Asia-Oceania Games in Bangkok.
“I’m aiming for the World Games, I have so much more to offer yet and I want to put little old Waikino and New Zealand on the world map for basketball,” Todd said.
