Exeter Hawks crowned UK champions

As part of a continued initiative to get young people engaged with sport, Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby, along with BT (a long-term supporter of disability sport in the UK), hosted the second Youth Tournament for the sport at Stoke Mandeville Stadium on the 19th of November where local team the Exeter Hawks were crowned champions.

Representing the South West was the Exeter hawks who will be travelled to the championships last weekend.

The participants were aged 10 to 15 with a physical, intellectual or learning impairment, or have a friend or family member with an impairment.

The 2016 runners up and defending champions, were London team the Saracens. Also, in the mix were teams such as Ospreys, Solent Sharks, Northampton and Bristol.

The event was hosted at the restored £10m Stoke Mandeville Stadium, which has a renowned reputation for hosting important Olympic and Paralympic events.

Tilly Robinson who also trains for the Westcountry Hawks in Plymouth said: “I have been playing for a couple of years, I train with the youth side as well as the Westcountry Hawks adults team. The training we have had definitely helps. Last year we finished second at the Copper Box to Saracens but that experience has helped us and we have since become regional champions leading into this tournament”.

Kirsty Clarke, National Development Director, GBWR, said, “Since 2012 we have more than doubled the teams, and people playing, wheelchair rugby in the UK, and have seen a 20% increase in officials getting involved in the sport.  This second BT Wheelchair Rugby Youth Tournament will enable us to continue that growth and perhaps discover some World class players of the future too.” 

Wheelchair Rugby is one of the only full-contact disability sports and is open to both men and women. The game is played on a basketball court, with boundary lines, a centre line, centre circle and two key areas. Two cones at each end of the court mark out a goal area, and a goal is scored when a player carries a ball across the line. Games are normally played in four eight-minute quarters and each team has 40 seconds to score a goal before the ball gets turned over. Chair-to-chair contact is allowed, but person-to-chair and person-to-person contact is not.