(Toronto, Ont.) In celebration of RBC Sports Day in Canada, the Wheelchair Basketball Canada National Academy played host to a group of students for an intrasquad demonstration game and a “give the sport a try” session at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) campus on Friday.

The National Academy, which is the world’s first full-time, daily training environment for high performance wheelchair basketball athletes, welcomed students from UTSC and St. Andrews Public School onto the basketball court to showcase the power of sport, build community and national spirit and get people active.

Paralympic gold medallists Abdi Dini (Scarborough, Ont.) and Tyler Miller (Kitchener, Ont.), and fellow Paralympian Tamara Steeves (Mississauga, Ont.) were among the athletes showcasing their skills during the intrasquad game. The athletes then switched gears to coach the local students as they tried the sport for themselves.

“We’re proud to be a part of Sports Day in Canada and to help champion physical activity”

“We’re proud to be a part of Sports Day in Canada and to help champion physical activity,” said Dini. “It was great to get on court with the students and see the kids having fun as they tried wheelchair basketball for the first time.”

The National Academy athletes are training hard with hopes of representing Canada at the 2014 Women’s World Wheelchair Basketball Championship in Toronto in June, as well as the Toronto 2015 Parapan American Games.

The National Academy also officially declared itself a member of the True Sport movement in support of sport that is healthy, fair, inclusive, and fun.

About RBC Sports Day in Canada

RBC Sports Day in Canada, presented by ParticipACTION, CBC and True Sport, will be held this year on Saturday, November 30 in communities from coast to coast to coast. This national celebration of sport, from grassroots to high-performance, is an opportunity for all Canadians to celebrate the power of sport, build community and national spirit and facilitate healthy, active living.

About WBC’s National Academy

Wheelchair Basketball Canada’s National Academy is a groundbreaking new initiative that launched October 2013 at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC). It is a homegrown solution designed to train the next generation of elite Canadian athletes in their pursuit of gold at future world championships and Paralympic Games, including the 2014 Women’s World Championship in Toronto, the Toronto 2015 Parapan American Games, the Rio 2016 Paralympic Summer Games and beyond. The National Academy will utilize existing facilities at UTSC until construction on the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre (TPASC) and Field House, which is the largest sport new-build for the Toronto 2015 Games, is complete in July 2014.