The Ottawa native has been coaching wheelchair basketball for 22 years
With her family moving several times during her childhood, sport played an important role in Kathy Ludwig’s upbringing. Born in Manitoba, Ludwig lived in Quebec, Ontario and England as her father served in the military.
A retired speech-language assistant, Ludwig now resides in Brampton, Ont. where she serves as the wheelchair basketball coach for Ontario’s Canada Games team.
“Sport saved me as a child,” she said. “I felt like sport was my connection to other people because we moved so often. Sport is how you can meet people and how you can have a common bond, and you learn about yourself, and you learn about what you’re capable of.”
Growing up, Ludwig’s sports of choice were basketball and soccer though she admits she played “almost everything.”
Ludwig turned to coaching when she had children helping with her daughter’s soccer team. Then when her son was born with a physical disability, she turned to parasport.
Looking for sport options for her son, Ludwig founded the Blazers Wheelchair Sports Group and its multi-sport program for youth in 1992. Then as her son got older, Ludwig created the Blazers wheelchair basketball program in 2001—the club later merged with Cruisers Sports in 2008.
She also took on the role of Director of Basketball on the Cruisers Board of Directors in 2008 in addition to coaching the multi-sport and basketball programs.
“I just got drawn into the parasport world, and I’m happy to be here,” Ludwig said. “Watching the athletes develop, and doing things they didn’t expect they’d be able to do, but figuring it out. That’s what I enjoy, I like seeing those moments.”
When approaching new athletes about wheelchair basketball, Ludwig said her selling point is connecting athletes with others in a similar age group.
“For me, it’s telling the athletes that, ‘Hey, you’re going to get this opportunity to play with people your own age, develop some friendships that will be lifelong, learn about yourself and grow as individuals and become better athletes at the end of the day’,” said Ludwig.
In 2019, Ludwig coached Team Ontario to a silver medal at the Canada Games in Red Deer, Alta. She previously served as an assistant coach with Team Ontario at the 2011 Canada Winter Games and the 2015 Games.
A Competition Development-certified coach, Ludwig was re-hired as the head coach of the Ontario Junior Provincial Wheelchair Basketball Program in September 2019, agreeing to a four-year term overseeing the athletes that will compete at the 2023 Canada Winter Games in February.
Despite her wealth of coaching experience, the pandemic made coaching during this Canada Games cycle particularly challenging.
“You really had to be creative and come up with ways to keep the athletes engaged,” Ludwig said. “When we’re talking about online training, they can’t see their friends; teenagers are motivated mostly by being with their friends. So trying to keep them engaged and having fun—we had some game nights and stuff like that—trying to keep our athletes working towards the goal of Canada Games, but at the same time having some fun and staying with each other. It was challenging, but I have to say the coaches across the different provinces, I think everybody helped each other with that.”
Despite the challenges, Ludwig was able to pick up some new coaching tactics during the pandemic that have remained useful.
“Some of the tactics that we were using online to train to be able to train some of my athletes are still using in the winter months because they can’t necessarily get out to a gym,” said Ludwig. “Some of the learning opportunities that we tend to have later on, such as teaching about nutrition, sports science tactics, we were able to give those sessions to them a bit earlier than we would have, but also being able to build on them.”
Looking to build on the silver medal from 2019, Ludwig is confident about the team she has assembled for the Canada Games in Charlottetown.
“I’m very happy with them, very impressed,” she said. “We just had a training camp a couple of weekends ago. We’ve got a competition coming up, and it’s looking good.”