The March 9 game at the Peoria Exposition Center took place the same weekend in the same location as the IHSA Class A basketball tournament. Because the events shared the venue, the wheelchair athletes were able to draw unprecedented crowds to their tournament games.

"People were stopping and watching our game," Warriors coach Cindy Schmidt said. "I had never played a game in front of so many spectators. All the bleachers were filled and the eyeballs were popping out of people's heads. I guess they had never seen the sport played like it was being played. I could say 5,000 people gained respect for the sport."

While winning was the primary objective of the six teams in the varsity tournament, players also were aware of the need to showcase the sport to the public.

Warriors point guard Bobby Finn, a freshman at Wheaton Warrenville South, has been playing wheelchair basketball since third grade. He believes the mission to increase public awareness was accomplished.

"I think we earned a lot of respect for the game with that many people seeing it," Finn said. "A lot of people don't even know that wheelchair basketball exists and that we are athletes. I think we proved to a lot of people that we are just as competitive as anybody else. It is a sport and we deserve recognition for it."

Wheaton resident Shawna Culp is the Warriors' only girl and youngest player. The Edison Middle School seventh-grader agrees that promotion is the key.

"It's really important because we can educate the public," she said. "I talk about it to my friends all the time. I'm hoping that when I get to high school, my friends will come out to watch just like normal basketball. It should be like normal basketball; it's just a little shorter."

The Warriors have five other players on their varsity roster, including two national academic all-Americans. Matt Ciarlette, a sophomore at Joliet Central High School, carries a 4.33 grade-point average on a 4.0 scale. He was the top-ranked all-American, while Garrette French, a sophomore at DeKalb High School, ranked sixth among the 16 all-American candidates.

Ciarlette is a guard with a penchant for dishing out assists, especially to his twin brother, Mark, a forward on the Warriors. He also was the top scorer in the championship game.

Ken Newcomer, a junior at Wheaton North High School, and Matt Bender, a junior at Stagg High School in Palos Park, round out the Warriors' roster. Newcomer alternates between guard and forward while Bender plays guard.

For most of these kids - like so many other high school athletes - the high school game is just a stepping stone to something greater.

"After high school, I'm hoping to get a scholarship to one of the colleges that carries wheelchair basketball," Finn said.

Culp sees a scholarship in her future as well, but as a seventh-grader she finds other things exciting about the game, especially the tournaments.

"I've made a lot of friends," Culp said. "I see friends from Minnesota and Nebraska that I don't get to see every day."

Last weekend, the Warriors played in a national tournament in Birmingham, Ala. The team was seeded 10th of 16 teams and finished in 10th place with a record of 2-2. But the Warriors turned a few heads with their strength and relatively young roster.

But nothing can top the IHSA championship weekend as far as Schmidt is concerned, especially the one-point victory to capture the crown.

"It was pretty exciting," she said. "We've got a lot of really tall players on our team, so we're hard to beat defensively. Spalding has a lot of outside shooters; more than normal for a junior team."

The game was the perfect showcase for the historic first in Peoria.

Copyright 2002 Daily Herald