Wheelchair Rugby Practice at Schiller (4 Hrs)

Wheel Chair Rugby practice at Schiller community center was another amazing volunteering experience for me. As per our usual weekly zoom meeting, Keiana got me signed up for this event. This was basically a wheelchair rugby practice session. The session went on from 11AM to 3PM. When i got there, I first met Joey, he introduced me to all of the other people. All of us were around twelve people for the session. Some of them were, professional wheelchair rugby players. Around 11.30 we started kicking off the session with a little warm up and stretching. After that we started doing some drills back and forth in the court. It looked easy at first few drills but it got really hard for me to catch up with the other members at 5 round drills. After that, all of the players decided to take a water break. After the water break, we decided to have a match and one more player joined us for the match. Running a rugby wheelchair is not easy as it looks from the outside and on top of that being a newbie is completely different. After the session my shoulders and neck were completely soar and exhausted. However, we lost the match. After the practice session, we circled up in the court for cool down and stretching. All of the players gave me the chance to break the session at the end, but things got a little funny. As they told me to count one to three and call  break at three, but i fumbled in between the moment. One of the players said, "Kamaljeet, this wasn't awesome but it was okay". All of us laughed and left the courtyard. Apart from all of that, the wheelchair rugby practice session was an insightful experience for me. Because, the place I come from, para-athletes do not get enough chance to thrive. This session gave me a better understanding about the lives of para-athletes and i got to know them better.