{"id":580892,"date":"2026-04-02T14:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/580892\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T14:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:41:08","slug":"mens-wheelchair-basketball-standout-helping-next-generation-the-crimson-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/580892\/","title":{"rendered":"Men\u2019s wheelchair basketball standout helping next generation \u2013 The Crimson White"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a> <\/p>\n

The Alabama Adapted Athletics arena was photographed on March 30, 2026. <\/p>\n

Men\u2019s wheelchair basketball player Eric Francis has been a standout player since the beginning, winning the team\u2019s defensive player of the year twice: once his junior year and then again his senior year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing one of the best defensive guys on the team is something I take pride in,\u201d Francis said. \u201cI want my teammates to know they can count on me to guard, box out, or get a stop or steal when needed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Off the court, Francis strives to continue inspiring the younger generation to play wheelchair sports. He and others from the team regularly travel to Atlanta to work with junior wheelchair basketball teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked up to kids when I was in the juniors program, and to be that role model, and that guy that can help younger guys be great athletes is amazing,\u201d Francis said. \u201cIt\u2019s not something I take lightly or for granted, but something that I am grateful to see that I\u2019m able to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Francis began playing wheelchair basketball in a youth league out of the Shepherd Center, a brain and spinal cord rehabilitation center in Atlanta, when he was 10 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His cousin worked as an intern for the adapted program there and asked him if he wanted to try wheelchair basketball one weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a pretty active kid, and it just kind of went from there,\u201d Francis said. \u201cI fell in love with it from that Saturday morning and have played ever since.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Francis continued playing throughout high school and was eventually recruited to play at Alabama in his senior year of high school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alabama\u2019s Adapted Athletics program was founded in 2003 with the start of the women\u2019s wheelchair basketball program. Men\u2019s wheelchair basketball joined the program two years later. Alabama is one of only 12 collegiate men\u2019s wheelchair basketball programs in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At Alabama, Francis quickly became essential, assisting the team to a national title his sophomore year and winning the defensive player of the year award for the Crimson Tide as a junior.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShowing others what my team and I can accomplish is something that is consistently on my mind, so that we can get the same opportunities and treatment,\u201d Francis said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alabama men\u2019s wheelchair basketball will compete next in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association\u2019s national championships as the No. 1 seed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Alabama Adapted Athletics arena was photographed on March 30, 2026. Men\u2019s wheelchair basketball player Eric Francis has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-580892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}