Kady Dandeneau won't be totally certain until the team is announced in May or June but there's a 99 per cent chance she will be playing for Canada this summer at the Paralympics in Tokyo.
"It's not announced yet but I think it's safe to say I'll be on it," said Dandeneau, the keynote speaker at the Timberwolves Legacy Breakfast next Wednesday morning at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel.
"It's the dream of athletes, the pinnacle of a career to become a Paralympic athlete, and that's what everyone is striving for. It's kind of wild when I think about it. Anytime you're ever able to represent your country and you get to be those select few who gets that opportunity it's an honour. I'm hoping to get out there and wear the maple leaf and do Canada proud."
The former star of the UNBC Timberwolves basketball team is entering her fourth season with the national team program, having adapted her game as a sit-down shooter in a wheelchair after her career as a standup athlete was cut short by a knee injury.
Dandeneau currently attends the University of Illinois at Urnbana-Champaign, where she is in her first year of a two-year masters program in kinesiology. She graduated UNBC's biomedical program and was recruited to Illinois on an athletic scholarship. She plays in the National Intercollegiate Wheelchair Basketball Association for the U of I Fighting Illini women's team, and they're shooting for the NIWBA national championship in Wichita, Kansas, March 19-21. Dandeneau chose Illinois to continue her studies because the coach of the team, Stephanie Wheeler, is the former Team USA coach who won the Paralympic tournament in Rio de Janeiro in 2018.
Dandeneau's career as a small forward with the Timberwolves spanned six seasons, from 2007-13. She twice led the T-wolves to provincial championships (2008 and 2012) when the team played in the B.C. Colleges Athletic Association and was a two-time BCCAA all-star and CCAA all-star. She was leading the league in scoring in January 2010 when she collided knee-on-knee with an opponent and suffered an ACL injury which sidelined her for five games. Dandeneau came back for the final regular season games and while practicing for the playoff she suffered a catastrophic injury which tore her ACL, damaged her MCL and broke part of her femur. She's had three knee operations and one hip surgery to repair the damage, and her condition will get progressively get worse with time.
Dandeneau decided to take the 2011-12 season off and came back to play two more seasons at UNBC but she was unable to play to the level she reached before her injuries. She returned to her home in Pender Harbour, where national wheelchair basketball team coach Tim Frick also resides, and in 2015 he convinced her to give the wheelchair game a try.
"I basically had to relearn a sport I was pretty good at it and I had to start at square one and that was pretty frustrating at first," she said. "You know what you want to do but I just couldn't do it because I didn't know how to work a chair. But I stuck with it and I think I've gotten lot of good things out of the sport. I'm enjoying it and I'm much closer to where I want to be as a player."
Dandeneau, who rates at 4.5 (minimally disabled) on the 1.0-4.5 classification spectrum, started out playing for the BC Royals co-ed club team and BC Breakers women's team in Vancouver. By 2017, her star qualities as a deadly-accurate shooter had returned and she made the senior national team. Dandeneau helped the Canadian women to a fifth-place finish at the 2018 world championship and last year led Canada to gold at the ParaPan American Games in Lima, Peru.
Her co-ed club team, the Toronto Rollin' Raptors, won the Division 2 National Wheelchair Basketball Association championship in Cleveland, Ohio and placed third with Team BC at the Canadian championship. In each of those events she was selected the tournament MVP.
"I've gotten to go to lot of places and travel a lot so it's been pretty cool ride so far," said Dandeneau. "Just getting a second chance to play basketball after a devastating injury, I couldn't ask for more. I had a great time at UNBC. I loved the school and loved the program. The city of Prince George was always so supportive of the UNBC program and it was so much fun playing home games because we always had the best crowds. People would say hi to me and congratulate me for a great game when I was grocery shopping. It just goes to show what kind of community Prince George has and I'm really excited to come back and in a small way give back to them."
The Legacy Breakfast is the Timberwolves Alumni Association's biggest annual fundraiser. Doors open at 6:30 a.m. and the breakfast starts at 7.
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