{"id":201327,"date":"2026-09-09T00:49:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/201327\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T00:49:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:49:08","slug":"home-court-and-high-hopes-as-canadian-men-and-women-chase-wheelchair-basketball-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/201327\/","title":{"rendered":"Home court and high hopes as Canadian men and women chase wheelchair basketball gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

United States’ Courtney Ryan (55) defends against Canada’s Arinn Young during a women’s wheelchair basketball quarter-final at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo on Aug. 31, 2021. Young will compete in her fourth world championship when Canada hosts the tournament in Ottawa.Kiichiro Sato\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s men\u2019s and women\u2019s wheelchair basketball teams hope home-court advantage can help end a lengthy world championship drought.<\/p>\n

Canada will host the IWBF Wheelchair Basketball World Championships for the first time since 2014, with all games being played in Ottawa. Action gets underway Wednesday, with the championship games set for Sept. 19.<\/p>\n

This marks the first time Canada has hosted the men\u2019s and women\u2019s world championships together, with 17 countries represented by 15 men\u2019s teams and 12 women\u2019s teams.<\/p>\n

Iran was scheduled to compete in the men\u2019s tournament but withdrew over the weekend because of visa issues affecting four team members, including the head coach and an assistant coach.<\/p>\n

Iran was in Canada\u2019s group with Morocco and Germany, and its games will be recorded as forfeits with no changes to the schedule.<\/p>\n

The Canadian women know firsthand what home-court advantage can mean. The last time the world championship was held in Canada, they captured gold in Toronto in 2014. The men, meanwhile, are chasing their first world title since 2006.<\/p>\n

Both Canadian teams reached the quarter-finals at the last world championships in Dubai in 2023, with the women finishing fifth and the men sixth.<\/p>\n

For Arinn Young, the tournament is a full-circle moment.<\/p>\n

With the world championships held every four years, opportunities to compete on home soil are rare. This will be the veteran\u2019s fourth worlds and her second in Canada.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Members of Team Japan take photos of the Centennial Flame as they visit Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the day before the start of the IWBF Wheelchair Basketball World Championships, on Tuesday.Justin Tang\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old was part of Canada\u2019s gold-medal team in 2014 but played limited minutes as a rookie, jokingly describing herself as \u201cmore of a cheerleader.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some people that have played 15 to 20 years, and they never get to experience a major on home soil, and I get to experience it twice,\u201d said Young. \u201cNow I\u2019m a vet on our national team and play big minutes, so it\u2019s going to be a little bit different. It\u2019s exciting to get to showcase who I am as an athlete and who we are as Canada on home soil again.\u201d<\/p>\n

While players try to keep politics off the court, Kady Dandeneau borrowed a line from Prime Minister Mark Carney, saying Canada wants to come out \u201celbows up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re coming out to be aggressors, like to really set the tone that we\u2019re here to attack,\u201d said Dandeneau, who will be playing in her third world championship. \u201cWe\u2019re not waiting for anyone to give us our opportunity; we\u2019re going to go out there and create our own opportunity and take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada is in Group A with China, Brazil, Great Britain, Australia and Spain. Group B features the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, Algeria, Germany and France.<\/p>\n

On the men\u2019s side, Canada won its last world title 20 years ago in Amsterdam and took bronze when Edmonton hosted the worlds in 1994.<\/p>\n

Veteran Nik Goncin says Canada may lack size, but it makes up for it with chemistry.<\/p>\n

That camaraderie stands out considering the range of experience on the roster, from 17-year-old Ibrahim Odza to 42-year-old Tyler Miller.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re playing the best kind of team basketball,\u201d Goncin said. \u201cSo, I like to think that that\u2019s going to be our strength because that\u2019s the thing we\u2019ve got to lean into and move as a squad as opposed to individual athletes just NBA-ing out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s tournament is divided into four groups. The U.S., Italy, Brazil and the Netherlands make up Group A; Australia, Great Britain, Turkey and Argentina are in Group B; Spain, Japan, Poland and Colombia are in Group C; and Canada, Morocco and Germany are in Group D following Iran\u2019s withdrawal.<\/p>\n

Canadian head coach Matteo Feriani says his team needs to be ready to compete from the opening tip.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you play internationally, the competition is very intense, and there is a lot of physicality,\u201d Feriani said. \u201cAnd when you are the home team, everybody wants to beat you. They will want to show up against us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s women open play Wednesday against Spain, while the men tip off against Morocco.<\/p>\n

The U.S. men\u2019s team comes in as the defending world champions, while the Netherlands hold the title on the women\u2019s side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: United States’ Courtney Ryan (55) defends against Canada’s Arinn Young during a women’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[164,224,238,214,212,239,17,211,230,231,227,213,210,235,171,234,143,222,249,215,216,229,225,226,219,240,220,244,245,247,242,246,94,243,217,142,233,113,232,241,223,236,237,228,221,218,248],"class_list":["post-201327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}