During the fourth and fifth days of the Paralympic Games, athletes with ties to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints played in the wheelchair rugby gold-medal match, helped the wheelchair basketball team move to the quarterfinals and also competed in the pool.
Here are updates on those competitions.
Wheelchair rugby
Team USA, including Josh Wheeler, won silver in the 2024 Paralympics. USA lost 48-41 to Japan on Monday, Sept. 2, in the gold-medal game. USA led 14-11 after the first eight-minute quarter, but then Japan pulled ahead to 24-23 at the end of the second quarter and continued to lead.
It’s the third Paralympics in a row that Team USA’s wheelchair rugby team, including Wheeler, has played in the gold-medal match — winning silver in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and 2021 in Tokyo, Japan.
USA won 50-43 in the semifinals against Great Britain on Sunday, Sept. 1. In the Tokyo Games, the gold-medal match was against Great Britain. And in Paris, USA lost to Japan 45-42 in a pool round match.
In Monday’s gold-medal match against Japan at the Champ de Mars Arena, Wheeler played for 24 minutes and 40 seconds and scored seven tries, or goals. He also had two turnovers and two defensive fouls.
In Sunday’s semifinal match against Great Britain at the Champ de Mars Arena, USA led by one at the end of the first quarter and kept the lead through the rest of the game. Wheeler played for 29 minutes and 58 seconds of the 32-minute game. He scored 14 tries, or goals, had three steals and a turnover. He also had a flagrant foul for grabbing another player’s wheel and was in the rugby penalty-box equivalent.
Wheelchair rugby is played indoors on a basketball court in four eight-minute quarters. Each player is classified from 0.5 to 3.5 points with 3.5 being the highest mobility, and teams are allowed four players with a total of up to 8 points on the court. For the 2024 Paris Paralympics, the teams are mixed. An extra half-point is allowed for each female player on the court.
The 44-year-old Arizona resident broke his neck in a motorcycle accident in 2006 that caused him to lose function in his lower body. Wheeler’s classification is 2.5 points.
Wheelchair basketball
With a 76-69 win over Australia on Sept. 1 in the group B preliminary rounds, USA’s wheelchair basketball team, including Paul Schulte, is 3-0 and going to the quarterfinals on Tuesday, Sept. 3, and will face France.
Against Australia, Schulte played 10 minutes and scored two points.
Paris is Schulte’s fourth Paralympics — and the first after retiring in 2015. He competed in the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney, Australia, the 2008 Games in Beijing, China, and in 2012 when the Games were in London, England, winning bronze.
During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he took up handcycling, building muscle and losing weight. This year, he decided to try competitive wheelchair basketball again and was invited to try out for the national team.
Shulte had a spinal cord injury in a car accident at age 10 and gave wheelchair basketball a try when he was 14. He currently serves in the bishopric in his Florida ward, and he and his wife have one son.
Wheelchair basketball players are classified based on their available movement, from 1 to 4.5. The five players must not be more than 14 combined. Schulte’s classification is 3.0.
Swimming
Over at the pools in the Paris La Defense Arena, Alejandra Aybar, 35, a native of Azua, Dominican Republic, swam in the women’s 100-meter breaststroke SB6 (for physical impairments) on Sunday, Sept. 1. Abyar was eighth with a time of 1 minute, 52.70 seconds.
Paris is her second Paralympics Games. In Tokyo, Japan, in 2021, she became the first swimmer representing her native Dominican Republic to compete in the Paralympics.
Aybar, who is 4 foot 3 inches tall, has brittle bone disease, osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as crystal bone disease.
She competed in the 200-meter individual medley SM7 (for physical impairments) on Saturday, Aug. 31, coming in 11th. She is also set to swim in the 50-meter butterfly S7 on Saturday, Sept. 7.
Upcoming competitions
The wheelchair basketball quarterfinals, including Schulte on Team USA, begins on Tuesday, Sept. 3. USA faces France.
Editor’s note: This was updated Tuesday, Sept. 3, to include photos from the wheelchair rugby match and medal ceremony.
