A few words about Paralympic volleyball

Looks basically like regular volleyball from this angle.
It pretty much is like regular volleyball. (photo credit: paralympiceducation.ca)

I’m currently in the process of moving AND starting a new job (big day for both tomorrow), so hopefully once that’s all finished I’ll be able to post some more. But I wanted to do a post about the Paralympics, which had competition begin today.

The Paralympics are a wonderful event, the pinnacle sporting event for athletes with physical disabilities the world over. Surely you remember Oscar Pistorius, the South African track sprinter who qualified for the Olympic Games as a double amputee. This was my favorite moment of the Olympics. He returns to London this week, swapping his status as ‘inspirational story’ for ‘hugely overwhelming medal favorite.’ Because there’s plenty of inspiration to be had at the Paralympics, with over 4,000 athletes doing more with permanent disabilities than most of us able-bodied lazy slobs ever do. I’d also like to give a nod to Natalia Partyka, the other Olympian besides Pistorius returning as a Paralympian and a much less known name.

Being that this is a volleyball blog, I’d like to showcase Paralympic volleyball, also known as sitting volleyball. If you know volleyball, the mere phrase “sitting volleyball” is pretty much all you need to know to understand it. Hardly any of the rules are changed. Athletes play sitting, the net is obviously shorter, the court is smaller, and front-frow players are permitted to block serves. That’s basically it. There are the same rules for ball-handling errors, net violations, and there’s also an equivalent to foot faults (I don’t know, but I sure hope they call them “butt faults”). There’s the same rules about three contacts, and players are just as specialized position-wise. They even use the libero, in a recent rule change.

The game levels the playing field immensely. In contrast to a lot of Paralympic sports, amputees in sitting volleyball generally don’t wear their prosthetics during play. I’ve even seen it suggested that having all your limbs is a disadvantage in Paralympic volleyball, because you have to “scoot” across the floor to be able to play the ball. On any offensive shot or block attempt, the player playing the ball must have at least one buttock in contact with the floor. Leeway is granted if a player is diving to ‘save’ a wayward ball.

Much like wheelchair basketball, it’s possible (and encouraged) for able-bodied players to compete with and against disabled athletes. USA Sitting Volleyball even encourages men and women to play together in the same matches, though the Paralympics do have separate events for each gender. At the elite level, the game is every bit as physically intensive as volleyball played by able-bodied players. Hits don’t seem to come quite as hard, but you’ve got to keep in mind that the ball is much closer to the ground.

There’s a great YouTube channel called ParalympicSportTV showcasing all kinds of Paralympic sports from the summer and winter Paralympics, including sitting volleyball. The first segment of the gold medal final of the women’s sitting volleyball tournament from Beijing can be found here. I encourage you to watch it, and the other sitting volleyball videos, and if you’re up to it, some of the other Paralympic sports as well. It’s really amazing stuff, and I wish it had a wider audience. These athletes deserve to have the eyes of the world on them every bit as much as their able-bodied counterparts.

One thing you’ll notice when you watch the video is that some of the players do stand to exchange celebrations between points. It may seem like a game specifically designed for persons unable to stand, but sitting volleyball actually does not classify players in any way (aside from ‘disabled’ and ‘minimally disabled’ — a team may have no more than two ‘minimally disabled’ players on their roster and no more than one on the court at any time). Amputees (such as the girl on the American team in the video with an amputated arm {makes sense for her to have her prosthetic arm on}), persons with spinal cord injuries and cerebral palsy all play together.

Sitting volleyball first debuted at the 1976 Toronto Paralympics as a demonstration sport and has been a full medal sport ever since the 1980 Paralympics in Arnhem, Netherlands. Ten men’s teams and eight women’s teams play in concurrent events, which started today and run until the men’s gold medal final on 8 September.