Steve Brown, captain of the Team GB Wheelchair Rugby squad, paid a visit to Thomas’s Clapham school yesterday.
A Paralympian hero went back to school yesterday to receive a cheque for £4,100 from the pupils and staff of leading Prepatory School, Thomas’s Clapham.
Steve Brown, captain of the Team GB Wheelchair Rugby squad, was presented with the cheque and a Good Luck card, signed by every student at the school.
Brown, 30, gave a presentation to the enraptured students explaining the sport of wheelchair rugby and how grateful he was for their extraordinary fundraising.
“They’ve done an awful lot of fundraising for the Paralympics and, you know, things like that should be rewarded,” he said.
Thomas’s Clapham have raised, in total, over £30,000 for the British Paralympic Association through fundraisers such as bake sales and discos.
Year Four student, Theo, said: “I think it’s great for Paralympics GB that the school put in so much effort.
“It’s good we’ve raised so much money.”
Along with the presentation of the cheque, the aim of the day was to raise awareness for the sport and the Paralympics as a whole.
“Today was an opportunity for me to showcase wheelchair rugby and talk to a school and young children who have obviously put an awful lot of their own focus into the Paralympics,” said Brown.
Brown was paralysed from the chest down after falling from a first floor balcony and breaking his neck in 2005.
He was brought to a game of wheelchair rugby whilst in rehabilitation and consequently signed up to the London Wheelchair Rugby Club two days after leaving hospital.
The next year he had won a national championship and was swiftly recruited to the GB Team where he narrowly missed out on a place in Beijing.
His ambition now is to improve GB’s world ranking as sixth and he believes that they can come away with a medal at this year’s Games.
Student Grace Wakeman presents Steve Brown with a Good Luck card
“Wheelchair rugby has given me an opportunity to prove that just because you’re in a wheelchair and this has happened or that’s happened doesn’t mean that you have to be comfortable with it or just shrug your shoulders to it.”
Wheelchair Rugby was introduced to the Paralympics at Atlanta in 1996 as a demonstration sport; it became a full medal event at Sydney in 2000.
At London 2012, the Wheelchair Rugby competition, featuring eight teams, will take place at the Basketball Arena from Wednesday 5th September until Sunday 9th September.
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