Making a Paralympic Roster

GRIT PR athlete Bailey Moody is headed to Paris with Team USA Women’s Wheelchair Basketball, but her making the team wasn’t as simple as her being one of the best players in the country.

Like all other Paralympic sports, women's wheelchair basketball operates under a classification system that informs how a roster is constructed.

According to the National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA), this classification is based on a player’s physical ability to complete fundamental basketball skills, including dribbling, shooting, rebounding, and reacting to contact (NWBA).

In 2014, the NWBA began using the Functional Classification System. There are eight classifications, also called classes: 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, and 4.5.  Class 1.0 is when an athlete has “no active movement of the trunk in the vertical, forward or sideways plane” (NWBA). The highest classification, 4.5, is when an athlete “ displays the ability to move the trunk maximally in all planes of movement with no significant weakness in any direction.”

A class 4.5 athlete also competes at “full volume of action in all planes, displays the ability to lean to either side during shooting, passing, contesting a shot or trying to intercept a pass.”

The entire playing field of five athletes cannot exceed 14 points, and all NWBA athletes on the roster must “have a lasting lower extremity disability that consistently interferes with mobility.”

Moody, a member of Team USA since 2018 and a 4.0 class athlete, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma at 10 years old. Not only did her bone cancer necessitate eight months of chemotherapy, but Moody and her parents saved her chance at an active life with a rotationplasty, a rare form of amputation.

Moody made the national team at her first selection camp and has been on the team since. Outside of the bronze medal, her accolades include four national championships with

Alabama in her freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years (2021-2024) and a gold medal at the U25 Women's Wheelchair Basketball World Championships (2019). She has also won silver medals at the Parapan American Games (2019) and the Americas Cup (2022).