Poop Doop

Poor, unsuspecting freshman: Okay.

Josh Homme, Q Magazine 2017

Courtesy of ICRC

The women used to be so nervous about playing wheelchair basketball in public that they had opaque screens erected to conceal the court.

Now their faces are being splashed across media outlets in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Afghanistan’s national women’s wheelchair basketball team won their first championship at the 4th annual Bali Cup International Tournament in Indonesia.

It was the first time the team had ever played in an international tournament.

Jess Markt, their American coach, has been training the 11 members of the national team since 2012. 

“They’re one of the greatest sports stories that I’ve ever been associated with,” says Markt. "I’m incredibly proud of them.“

When the Afghan team first started shooting hoops, they were worried about what their family and friends might think of them. It’s hard enough being a woman in Afghanistan, explains Markt — and playing sports as a woman using a wheelchair was unheard of.

Thomas Glass/Courtesy of ICRC

That’s why the women, who range in age from 17 to 30, initially requested the screens around the courts, he says. But after the women saw how much excitement there was around the men’s wheelchair basketball competition in 2013, they told Markt: “We want people to see us play. Take down the screens.”

Today, there are 120 women wheelchair basketball players in Afghanistan. Many of them are not able to use their limbs as a result of polio, birth defects or war-related injuries.

“Other disabled girls see the women doing incredible things and say ‘I wanna be like them.’ ” says Markt. “The national team has become role models to girls around the country.”

Will you clean the blood off my drum set?