Manitoba basketball coach leading Team Canada to Paralympic qualifier

Michèle Sung has been named head coach of the Senior Women’s National Team by Wheelchair Basketball Canada. (Source: CTV News Winnipeg)

The national women’s wheelchair basketball team is hoping to punch its ticket to the 2024 Paris Paralympics this summer and a Manitoba coach is leading the way.

Michèle Sung was named head coach of the Senior Women’s National Team (SWNT) by Wheelchair Basketball Canada (WBC) earlier this week.

Sung is currently head coach of the University of Manitoba Bisons women’s team. She’s been behind that bench for the past decade and will continue serving in that role going forward, despite her new appointment.

“It’s definitely a unique and new challenge for me,” Sung told CTV News, “I’m really excited to get back to coaching at the international level.”

This will be Sung’s second stint with the SWNT. She served as an assistant coach from 2012 to 2014, and helped Canada win a gold medal at the 2014 Women’s World Championship.

“I think I've always had the goal to coach nationally for Team Canada,” Sung said. “And sometimes you don't always get to choose the opportunities that find you and I'm really excited that this one did.”

Sung said, fundamentally, wheelchair basketball is very similar to its more traditional counterpart.

She explained five-on-five concepts and statistics are the same, and there aren’t many rule changes either. However, wheelchair basketball uses a classification system where each athlete is assigned a numerical value – and you can only have a certain amount of points on the floor at the same time.

Players belong to one of eight classes ranging from 1.0 to 4.5. According to WBC, “lower class athletes are more limited in their functional skills. Athletes assigned to higher classes have few if any limitations.”

“So the biggest difference is rotations, how you substitute, and then how you use those players based on their abilities,” Sung explained.

Sung will put that to practice starting next week at the SWNT’s training camp in Ottawa. The team is prepping for an eight-team tournament taking place mid-April in Osaka, Japan. The top four teams will qualify for the 2024 Paris Paralympics.

“Expectations are to qualify – that’s the goal. It’s a competitive tournament and they have decreased the amount of teams at the Paralympics, so the task is harder,” Sung said.

The United States, Great Britain, and China have already qualified for the Paralympic Games starting August 29.

Sung said she’s confident Team Canada’s talented and experienced roster will be in the mix.

“We have two, maybe three of the best scorers in the world, so it’s just kind of getting them all on the same page,” Sung explained. “It’s a quick on-board, but an exciting challenge.”

The 2024 Women’s IWBF Repechage Tournament tips off from Osaka on April 17.