Three members of the Wollongong Roller Hawks have booked their tickets to the Tokyo Paralympics.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Australian Rollers squad named on Wednesday featured Roller Hawks captain Brett Stibners alongside Tristan Knowles. A third Roller Hawk, Hannah Dodd, was included in the Australian Gliders women's squad last week.
"I feel really good about being picked," Stibners said. "I feel relieved, excited and a little bit nervous."
Both teams are in camp in Darwin while Stibners is stuck in lockdown, meaning Stibners may not train with the team again until they arrive in Tokyo. The Rollers have a final camp in Cairns from August 13-20, with Stibners granted an exemption to keep training as he prepares for his fourth Paralympics.
"It'll be a smallish role," he said. "It could be big, but probably smallish. They're hoping Aupie (Michael Auprince), who was fantastic at camp can continue that into the international games and mine will be more of a supportive role."
Read more: Illawarra Hawks bring Trice back to the NBL
Joining him in the final 12 is Knowles, who will contest his fifth Paralympics.
After missing the final cut in 2016, Roller Hawk Luke Pople has again been denied his Paralympic dream. He has been named as first reserve and been granted an exemption to stay fit and help Stibners prepare.
"I'm obviously a little bit disappointed, it would've been my first Paralympics. They were looking at taking different combinations which didn't work in my favour," he said. "Now it's my job to keep training and help the guys that did make it from Wollongong to keep them in shape and keep them going and hopefully ready to go for when they leave."
Dodd is using the extra preparation time in Darwin to acclimatise to a new role.
"I'm really excited, it's been a long journey. Longer than any of us really expected it to be but I'm super stoked to be going back to my second Paralympics," she said.
"We have had a couple of late withdrawals from our squad so we've got a very high number of lows, so I'll probably step up into a bit of a mid-point role and do a bit of ball handling and point guard work as well."
We depend on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe here. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support.