SEAN ROONEY
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You might remember him doing backflips, but you might not remember his face.
Now confined to a wheelchair, Chad Jassman no longer wears a costume when he's putting on a show.
Jassman, perhaps best known in town for his time as Tigers mascot Rroary, is on Canada's wheelchair basketball team headed to the Paralympics Aug. 29 to Sept. 9.
"Tryouts were last month in Vegas... but I've led the team in minutes played so I knew coming in," said Jassman via Skype last week from Germany. "It's great, I'm definitely glad to play in my first Olympics."
How he wound up in this spot is a tragic tale with a happy outcome. Jassman never played basketball growing up, preferring hockey and skiing. He entertained crowds at The Arena as Rroary, was an instructor at Hidden Valley and dreamt of flying airplanes for a living.
Everything changed when he was paralyzed by a car crash in 2004 near his hometown of Burstall.
Confined to a wheelchair but not from playing sports, he picked up basketball a year later. He figured it would be easy.
"I was really naive when I got hurt. I looked and it and now that I'm hurt, how hard could it be, thinking disabled sport was easier.
"You could let NBA players play and not one of them would do well against us."
But hard work and some unexpected talent have paid off for Jassman. He moved to Calgary and nearly made the national team in 2008.
Now 28, he looks back on the accident as an opportunity.
"It's weird that me breaking my back closed a lot of doors... but it opened up just as many if not more," he said.
The past four years have only seen Jassman's game improve, and as the highly-ranked Canadian men look to London he's front and centre as a punishing defender. He averaged more than 38 minutes (out of a 40-minute game) at the recent Parapan American Games in Mexico where Canada finished third.
"My job is to crash and bang," said Jassman, who currently plays for the Trier Dolphins, a pro team in Germany. "In Germany I'm averaging 10 points a game. When I play with Canada, because we have such good big men I want to get them into the paint."
Yes, there is pro wheelchair basketball in Germany. Compared to Calgary, where his club team averaged a couple dozen family and friends in the stands, Jassman says there are upwards of 1,000 fans in the stands for games in Germany. The team sells memorabilia, including pillows with his face plastered on them.
Recognition is a bit harder to come by at home, where Paralympic athletes don't get the same attention as able-bodied ones. Jassman can't help but note the national men's basketball team hasn't been an Olympic contender since winning silver in 1936. The wheelchair team won silver in 2008, plus gold in 2004 and 2000.
"We get a little more media attention than four or eight years ago," he admitted. "We've won gold, gold and silver, world championships and they never mention anything about us (in comparison)."
There's no guarantee of a medal this time around, as evidenced by Canada's third-place finish in Mexico. They were upset in the semifinals by Columbia, one of many up-and-coming teams.
"Four years ago the four teams were Australia, Great Britain ,Canada and the U.S.," said Jassman. "Now the world has tightened up. Coming in, other than Japan and South Africa, the other teams could win it all.
"I would still rank us No. 2 or 3."