The Victoria native was introduced to the game by former National Team member Jessica Vliegenthart
Simon Cass was always involved in sports growing up, playing everything from baseball to basketball and rugby; however, former Senior Women’s National Team member Jessica Vliegenthart got Cass interested in Wheelchair Basketball.
Cass was attending Camosun College in Victoria, where he was working on his undergraduate degree in Sports Leadership, when he heard Vliegenthart speak about wheelchair basketball.
“She mentioned they needed players and coaches; if you have basketball experience, all the better, and it was an assignment in that class to participate in a community program,” Cass recalled. “I went and did my assignment; it was 10 hours, and I had so much fun.
“I saw the game as a challenge. I was motivated to try and figure out how to use the chair and how the game worked. Then the more I got involved, at the higher levels, learning about teamwork on the floor, one player can’t do it all the way they can in most other sports—all of that got me hooked. On top of that, it’s a great community and great people.”
Cass eventually became the head coach of BC’s provincial team in 2013—a role he held until December 2021, when he left to work on his master’s in kinesiology at the University of British Columbia.
For the Victoria native, the most rewarding of coaching is helping athletes reach their goals.
“Going through that process with people and helping them reach their goals is really rewarding,” he said. “Whether it’s trying to figure out how to make your very first layup or trying to figure out how to make the national team or win at the international level—a lot of it’s the same stuff: it’s helping people figure out how to get from Point A to Point B, ideally, give them the tools so they can figure it out themselves.”
In the summer of 2021, Cass served as an assistant coach with the Senior Women’s National Team at the Tokyo Paralympics. Though the team didn’t get the result it was looking for, the experience served Cass well in his development as a coach.
“That was really interesting. It was my first Paralympic Games. It was challenging,” Cass said. “The team didn’t have the result, we ultimately wanted. I was able to take a lot of learnings from that experience back into my practices and coaching at home here in B.C.”
Last year, at the Junior Nationals in Charlottetown, P.E.I., Cass coached Team BC to a gold medal victory—now he’s hoping to build on that at the Canada Games in February.
“That was a big accomplishment for our province and our program,” said Cass. “Our junior team has never won a gold medal at Nationals or Canada Games, so that was a first. It was 2003, the last time our Canada Games team won a medal, so it was a long time coming.
“We want to take confidence from the fact we had a good performance in June into the Canada Games, but at the same time, and I’ve made it very clear, we can’t go in thinking we’re just going to show up and win because there’s a lot of very good teams, particularly in our pool.”
While Cass is currently enjoying his role as Team BC’s Canada Games coach, he has aspirations to join the national program in the future and would consider coaching opportunities in the U.S. or Europe.
Off the court, Cass hopes to one day put his master’s in kinesiology to use as a professor focusing on adaptive sport.