Three New Teams For Wheelchair Basketball League
The Australian league will have more of a national feel with the addition of three new sides in 2025.
The Women’s National Wheelchair Basketball League (WNWBL) will welcome three new teams in 2025 as the league looks to build on the return of the national competition in 2024.
The Gold Coast Rollers will take over from the Queensland Comets as the sunshine state’s team in the top league, Victoria will have an all-female presence for the first time since 2019 and Adelaide Thunder will field a women’s team in the WNWBL for the very first time.
When dual Paralympian Ella Sabljak heard there was uncertainty over a Queensland women’s team returning in 2025, she immediately sprang into action to see what could be done.
“I approached Joel (McInnes) and the team at Gold Coast Basketball and asked was this a possibility, and they said yes let’s see what we need to do, let’s see about budget and we just dived straight in,” said Sabljak.
Who better than a team already nicknamed the Rollers to field a team in a wheelchair basketball competition?
“They were just so on board with having a national league team and especially on the Gold Coast, there’s been a lot of talks happening about having a NBL team here on the Gold Coast in the national league so for us to put in a team into our national league they were just all about it and super giddy.”
The team will call on players from around Queensland including Mackay, Townsville, Rockhampton, Gladstone and the South East.
Ella last played in the league in 2022 (pictured below), after which she transferred over to Wheelchair Rugby, becoming part of the Steelers bronze medal win at last year’s Paris Paralympics.
A host of local players will be able to play in the national league in front of home fans when a Victoria-based women’s team returns to the national league for the first time since the Kilsyth Cobras played in 2019.
Leading the charge will be Australian Glider Laura Davoli who has played for Perth and Queensland in order to get national league games as her star continues to rise within the Australian Gliders program.
“As a kid that came through our program and state development program, a kid like Laura is a perfect example of, she had to go interstate to play national league last year,” said Basketball Victoria Diversity and Inclusion Manager Sheena Atkin.
“We want her here playing and to put these players on show here in Victoria so that not just their family and friends can come but we can expose more of the basketball community to the sport and all the amazing athletes that we have.”
Entry into this year’s league has been driven by Leanne Del Toso and Shelley Matheson and completes a strong junior pathway for the state’s up and coming female players.
Shelley travelled from Victoria to play with the Sydney Blues last season, before returning to the national Gliders squad. HER WAY spoke to ‘Chaps’ last year about her passion to see Victoria represented in the league:
“We need something down here. That’s going to be my next mission. We just want to create opportunities for Victorian girls.”
The Adelaide Thunder round out the final addition to the WNWBL with the South Australian Wheelchair Basketball Association (SAWBA) switching from fielding a mixed team in the NWBL last season to a women’s team, in the women’s league this year.
“We’ve had a strong group of girls who have been very dedicated to being part of the Association,” said Thunder player and head of SAWBA, Lucinda Bueti.
“A lot of these girls were training with the team last year when we had the men’s team going so we looked at the number of girls we had coming out and we said let’s put in a women’s team because there’s a lot of dedication.”
“They’ve put in a lot of hard effort to get to where they are, so we wanted to reward that effort.”
The Gold Coast, Victoria and Adelaide will join WNWBL mainstays Sydney Blues, Perth Wheelcats and defending champions Sydney Uni with Round 1 of the women’s league commencing on May 30th.
*much of this story is from Wheelchair Basketball Australia’s website.