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Wheelchair Basketball
Spring 2011 · Comment ·
Basketball was second nature to 6-foot-9 Anthony Pone. The Philadelphia native played on a community college state championship team while serving in the Army until a car accident took his right leg in 2002. Five years later, his Veterans Administration counselor convinced him to give the sport another try. Soon, scholarship offers to play wheelchair basketball started pouring in. His third year with the Movin’ Mavs has the 37-year-old center still adapting. “The chair is your legs,” he says. “But it’s all basketball. Put the ball in the hoop.” Pone, who averages three to five blocked shots and six to eight rebounds a game, is an imposing figure. “Once I get that ball and I’m at that post, there’s no one who can stop me but myself,” he says. The Movin’ Mavs seek their eighth National Intercollegiate Wheelchair Basketball Association championship when they host the tournament March 10–12. The social work senior graduates in May with plans to earn his master’s degree. Pone’s career goal is to help fellow veterans, which he has already done through a Wounded Warriors Project tournament sponsored by the Movin’ Mavs in December.
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