HARBORFIELDS
Instructor Hardly Spinning Their Wheels
By Mike Koehler / mkoehler@longislandernews.com

For many, the idea of being limited to a wheelchair is an inconvenience at best. And yet, a Physical Education teacher at one school had to turn away some students who were intrigued with the concept.

“You have to go to class,” Chris Agostino said to a Harborfields High School student on Friday afternoon trying to skip his studies.

He wasn’t the only one, however, who was willing to cut class or even sacrifice a lunch or study hall period to take part in his unusual program – wheelchair basketball.

Ready to begin a gym basketball season, Agostino decided to contact his wheelchair-bound cousin to help give his students a potentially life-changing understanding last week.

“They get to experience something unless, God forbid, they get injured [they wouldn’t otherwise],” he said.

As each set of students entered the South Gym, Agostino introduced them to Town of Brookhaven Athletic Director Jason Soricelli.

Soricelli, 28, was paralyzed from the waist down during a dirt bike accident in December 2003. After hitting a rock, his bike flipped over and landed on his back, breaking it.

“When it happened I really didn’t know how or what to think. I thought life goes on,” Soricelli said.

However, the athletic director, who was an accomplished athlete before the accident, leveraged sports once again to keep himself optimistic. After having surgery and spending a week at Stony Brook University Hospital and just a month at St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson rehabbing, Soricelli got the ok from doctors to compete again.

“I was getting day passes to go play sports and then I’d go back to the hospital,” he said. “Wheelchair sports helped me overcome my injuries.”

Now a member of wheelchair teams affiliated with the New Jersey Nets and the New York Jets, Soricelli organizes wheelchair sports as head of the Brookhaven Wheelchair Athletic Program and visits schools to offer students an opportunity to try it.

Back at Harborfields, Agostino and Soricelli teamed up to organize five on five wheelchair basketball games during the entire school day last Thursday and Friday. Teams donned either red or blue pinnies and hopped into sports chairs, a style of wheelchair with angled wheels for support, a metal toe guard in the front and a small fixed wheel on the back for more support.

Games lasted for five minutes or until one team scored two points – the latter of which occurred frequently on Friday afternoon, although many students were obviously having trouble with the wheelchairs.

“They want to stand up so bad, but they can’t,” Agostino said, almost laughing.

Junior Myles Bane, a member of the varsity basketball team, thought it would be similar to playing on his feet.

“Once you’re on the chair it’s completely different,” Bane said.

His classmate, Michael Carfagna, said it was fun, freely showing off the bandages and minor wounds on his hands from playing. However, the senior also realized that a handicap doesn’t have to inhibit someone.

“You think disabled people and you don’t think sports,” Carfagna said. “Just because they’re disabled doesn’t mean you can’t play sports.”

Agostino said he believes most of the students found some significant meaning in the event. He also revealed that he spoke with Junior, one of the school’s two wheelchair-bound students, about their new mindset.

“They look at you a little differently now. They’ve experienced a little of your handicap,” Agostino said.