Wheelchair Basketball at Douglas

Tim came to Douglas in 1986, initially starting as a contract worker for the SPSC department before eventually becoming a regular faculty member.

During his first year at the College, Tim established an extra-curricular wheelchair basketball club program as part of Douglas Athletics. The program started with Tim successfully persuading a single wheelchair user on campus to try the sport, and eventually gained traction as people from the community began joining and taking interest. It also offered opportunities for people from G. F. Strong who have been injured, as well as high school students who used chairs, to come learn about the sport and using wheelchairs for fitness. Eventually, the club program expanded competitively into playing within the local BC and Lower Mainland leagues, with the provincial leagues following soon after. Under Tim’s guidance, the Douglas College Royals won several national championships at the pinnacle of its competitive career.

As the wheelchair basketball program initially came into existence, its motions automatically lent itself to the faculty acquiring wheelchairs. Together with Alan, Tim put forth a grant application to the John Hardie Mitchell Family Foundation, which donated wheelchairs in support of the program. Tim used the chairs for both the after-curricular program and for enriching classroom learning. In his course PE 300 (The Analysis of Performance in Team Sports), he would include adaptive sports, such as wheelchair basketball and goalball, as part of the learning curriculum. Wheelchairs were practically incorporated into these adaptive classes, and were brought into classrooms to prompt awareness for accessibility and inclusion.