When Jordan Cohen was eleven, a car accident left her unable to walk. For months she refused to leave the house. "I was sure that my life as an athlete was over," she remembers. Before the accident, she had played basketball four times a week.
Everything changed when a physiotherapist took her to watch a wheelchair basketball practice at a sports center near her home. "The players were crashing into each other, laughing and shouting," Jordan says. "Nobody looked sorry for themselves. I wanted to be on that court."
Wheelchair basketball is played on a regular court, with the basket at the usual height of 3.05 meters. Players must bounce the ball while they push their chairs, and they may push the wheels only twice before they bounce, pass or shoot the ball. The chairs are light and specially built, with wheels that lean inwards so that players can turn quickly.
Today Jordan is sixteen and trains five times a week with her club. Last year she was chosen for the national youth team, and on Fridays she coaches young children who have just started to play. Her arms are so strong that her older brother, a firefighter, refuses to arm-wrestle her.
Jordan also visits schools to talk about sport and disability. "People see the chair first," she says. "I want them to see the player."