5 hours Ago By By Lilley Halloran
"I got you. I got you!" Daniel Clements yelled across the court Sunday as he passed the ball to a teammate in the last game of the Mizzou Classic, a wheelchair basketball tournament. The tournament, which hosted teams from Arkansas, Tennessee and Kansas, marked the kickoff of MizzouRec's wheelchair basketball season.
The Missouri team was the only collegiate-level team in the competition — the rest were adult division teams. "I felt like we really fought back. We played with a lot of passion.
We played for each other. We pushed hard," Clements said at the close of the tournament, of which his team won two games and lost three. Now a junior at the University of Missouri, Clements is the wheelchair basketball team's most senior player.
Head Coach Ron Lykins said that he's seen Clements take on "leadership qualities." "(He's) improved as a teammate, improved as an individual player," Lykins said. "Just a complete across-the-board improvement.
" Clements' father, Neil Clements, said that he is anxious to see his son step into a leadership position in "the way we've always thought he could and should." In early November, Daniel Clements traveled to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to pursue playing in a higher level of wheelchair basketball. He competed for a chance to join the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation's U.
S. under 23-years-old team, known as U23, which can be a feeder into the Paralympics. "He was very nervous to go to that tryout because he knew he'd be playing at a completely different level," Lora Clements, his mother, said.
Once on the court, "he has the instincts for it," she said. Of the 30 competitors, Daniel Clements was one of 20 who joined the pool of potential players. "I feel very honored," he said.
"What that means moving forward is I gotta up my game." If he makes it past another round of tryouts this spring, Clements will be one of 12 to compete against international teams in the Men's U23 World Championship in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in summer 2025. "My dream ever since I was little was to play for Team USA (in) the Paralympics," Clements said.
"Right now is the first time I think I've actually got my foot in the door." Daniel Clements has been playing wheelchair basketball since he was 6 years old. He and his mother were at Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis when a parent of a wheelchair basketball player approached the two of them.
Daniel Clements was zipping and tooling around on his wheelchair when the parent asked if he had ever considered basketball, Neil Clements said. Since then, Daniel Clements has played at every level of wheelchair basketball competition possible in tournaments across the country. It became his "happy place.
" When asked about what he wanted to do after high school, Clements' parents said that he never had a career in mind, only wheelchair basketball. Neil Clements said that Lykins discovered Daniel Clements at a tournament in high school, where he was scouting another player. Daniel Clements chose to attend MU for Lykins, who spent nine years as head coach of the U.
S.A. Men's Wheelchair Basketball Team.
He finished his Team USA stint with the most wins out of any U.S. coach and the only coach in Paralympic history who led both men's and women's teams to gold, according to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame .
"You're probably not gonna find a smarter coach than him that knows his stuff. I wouldn't trade another coach for him," Daniel Clements said, adding that playing for Lykins is his favorite part of being on the team. Being a part of the team isn't easy, though.
Five days a week, Daniel Clements wakes up at 4 a.m. because Lykins requires all six players to be warmed up and ready for practice by 5:30 a.
m. "Coaching is teaching," Lykins said. "I teach them how to be competitive, what it's like to be on a team.
I teach them the game, the fundamental skills." Always his biggest supporters, Daniel Clements' parents travel from Indianapolis to see him play at almost every game. Over the years, Lora and Neil Clements have found community in the stands with parents who also understood the language and physical complications of having children with disabilities.
"Now, at this level, I think the most satisfying thing for me is to see Daniel succeeding and doing what he loves," Lora Clements said. "In a world where people tell him he can't do things, this is something that he can do and do well." Until Daniel Clements has his next tryout for the international team, he will continue to compete for MizzouRec's team, including next weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, which has another of the nation's twelve existing wheelchair basketball teams.
The next wheelchair basketball home games will take place Dec. 6 and 7 at the MizzouRec complex..
