COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SPEED LEVEL IN WHEELCHAIR BASKETBALL FROM DIFFERENT COUNTY

Wheelchair basketball is one of the Paralympic performance sports and the only team-based sport played at the elite level by people with spinal cord injuries. It can also be performed by people diagnosed with paralysis, amputated limbs, fragile bone structure and other disabilities. In Romania, wheelchair basketball is an amateur sport. We have developed a programme including 1-2 training sessions weekly, basically due to the activities in which these people are engaged, the financing level and the required preparation for the research subjects. So, the participants were 34 Romanian wheelchair basketball players coming from different counties: Sibiu, Prahova, Ilfov and Brasov. Purpose: This study aims to make a synthesis by using a comparative analysis between the speed level of the Romanian wheelchair basketball players and those from Poland and Lithuania, two countries in top 10 at the 2015 European Wheelchair Basketball Championship. For this, we selected the following tests: 20m sprint and slalom without the ball. Research questions: Are the Romanian wheelchair basketball players rising to the level of the top 10 European teams? Findings: The first and fourth classes, according to the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF), got poor values for 20m sprint, while the second and third classes got below values. In slalom without the ball, the first and second classes got poor values, and the third and fourth classes got below values. (C) 2018 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.UK