On a recent Wednesday in West Seattle, eight athletes in wheelchairs spun across the Southwest Teen Life Center’s basketball court. A volleyball flew from player to player; chairs collided and disengaged, filling the gym with metallic booming sounds.

For those familiar with wheelchair rugby—a fast-paced, full-contact sport played by athletes with both upper- and lower-limb impairments—the scene was unremarkable.

“It’s an hour and a half of sprinting back and forth, and people trying to kill you the whole time,” said Jeremy Hannaford, a Port Orchard native who has been playing wheelchair rugby for 20 years.

Hannaford is the coach of the Seattle Slam, Washington’s only wheelchair rugby club. Every Wednesday from 5 to 9 p.m., people of all abilities and from all walks of life gather in West Seattle for the Slam’s weekly open practice.

Players joke around as they transfer into rugby chairs and don rubber-coated gloves and athletic tape to protect their hands from injury. Support staff—physical and occupational therapists—are on hand to right chairs, rip tape, and reinflate tire tubes.

Wheelchair rugby, also known as “quad rugby” or “murderball,” was invented in 1977, but has struggled to gain mainstream attention. This past summer, two factors drove increased media coverage: Team USA took home the silver medal at the 2024 Paris Paralympics, while Sarah Adam became the first woman to compete for Team USA.

According to Hannaford, the attention trickled down to the Seattle Slam. As Washingtonians realized there was a local outlet for the game, the Slam saw an influx of sponsorships and fans.

Brian Moore, who used to regularly drive three hours each way to play with the Slam, noted that new, able-bodied viewers are realizing something people with disabilities have known all along.

“For able-bodied people who see the sport for the first time, they’re kind of blown away by it,” Moore said. “For anyone that’s living with a disability of any type, it’s not nearly as impressive, because they’re used to just doing whatever they want to do anyways. They’re just people doing people things.”

“Yeah, we’re disabled, we’re in wheelchairs, whatever, but we’re elite athletes,” Hannaford added. “We bust our ass to be as good as we are, and we have ambitions and goals.”

For Hannaford, one of those goals is to grow the Slam into a competitive force. In 2005, when he first started playing with the Slam, the team didn’t prioritize attending travel tournaments, the way they do now.

“We didn’t make nationals for the first six, seven years I played,” he said. “It was more just, we go and have fun.”

Things have changed gradually: the Slam established a nonprofit, brought in coaches to run clinics, sought out sponsors, and appointed a team manager. Brent Rotter, a seven-year Slam veteran, has witnessed the Slam’s evolution firsthand.

“There is an underlying current on our team now that we want to go out and, if not win a national championship, at least get to nationals,” he said, referencing the United States Wheelchair Rugby Association’s national championship tournament, which takes place in early May.

Although Hannaford, Rotter, and the other members of the “Slam Fam” play to win, they’re also intentional about cultivating community, according to Cecilia Black, the only woman on the Slam’s ten-person roster. “Our team is such a family,” she said.

Chase Tasca, who joined the Slam three years after a devastating motorcycle accident, echoed Black’s assessment. “You learn a lot about how to live with a disability,” he said. “Even more, I’d say, than what you learn in the hospital. I mean, there’s guys here that have been disabled just about as long as I’ve been alive.”

Multiple Slam players expressed regret for not involving themselves in the wheelchair rugby community earlier in their recovery. To that end, Hannaford wants the Slam to continue to connect with potential recruits, as often and as early as possible.

“We’re trying to reach out to hospitals and occupational therapists and physical therapists and people that deal with disabilities and trying to get the word out that we’re here,” he said, adding that he encourages everyone to come to an open practice and “at least try it and see what happens.”

After all, someone might get lucky enough to experience the same thing Hannaford did the first time he transferred to a rugby chair.

“Freedom,” he said.