LEXINGTON, Ky. — A Lexington teen recently won the 2021 National Wheelchair Basketball Association National Championship with his team called the Cincinnati Dragons.
The Henry Clay graduate plays on a wheelchair basketball team that includes several other Kentuckians.
Kerwin Haake lives with two disabilities. He has cerebral palsy and he’s deaf.
“I would just change sports every year or every season,” said Kerwin through his interpreter and mom, Rebecca Haake. “But because I couldn't walk well and couldn't walk the same as the other kids couldn't stand and play. I was thinking about, in the future I need to do something different from that.”
He explained that he tried a lot of sports until a substitute teacher introduced him to wheelchair basketball when he was 13.
“The first time I played wheelchair basketball, it was just OK, I felt weird, because I was, you know, I had played other sports before,” said Kerwin.
He kept at it. For years he practiced and practiced. This included traveling to Cincinnati three times a week to practice with his team.
“So when I first started playing when I was about 13 and a half, I actually felt really weird in the chair, because I was not comfortable in it, and I felt weird, because it was hard to shoot from that distance,” said Kerwin.
He needed to learn how to speed up and slow down all while using a wheelchair.
“We weren't sure if we'd even get a season, because of the COVID-19, but our kids started working really hard back last June,” said his father Mike Haake.
That hard work paid off. The Cincinnati Dragons are now the 2021 National Champions.
“It was a really exciting game and overtime. We'd beat a very good Atlanta team,” the elder Haake said. “It was the No. 2 ranked team, we came in No. 1 ranked and managed to pull out in an overtime victory.”
It’s a victory Kerwin couldn’t even possibly imagine.
“It was just crazy. It was, it was crazy because thinking back in the future, or back in the past. I didn't imagine that I would play wheelchair basketball. I just played other sports and so here we are,” said Kerwin.
Playing basketball will continue in Kerwin’s future. In the fall, Rebecca said he’s headed to Arizona to join a wheelchair basketball team at the University of Arizona where he plans to major in deaf studies.
“He's definitely come a long way and, you know, we're proud of all the changes that have happened in the last couple of years. Wheelchair basketball has been a game changer, literally for our family,” Rebecca said.
The Cincinnati Dragons finished the season with a 28-0 record this year.