Ryan Neiswender- A Long Road to Success
Disability is defined as a lack of adequate power, strength or ability, incapacity.
Examples under this definition don’t include Ryan Neiswender.
Neiswender is a junior at the University of Illinois who may just be the best athlete at the school you never hear about. He has solidified himself as a start in the wheelchair basketball world, and his potential gives him aspirations to aim for the biggest stages in his sport.
Neiswender’ story begins in his hometown of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Neiswender, who diagnosed a birth with arthrogryposis, meaning he was born without quadriceps in his legs. Despite being confined to leg braces and a wheelchair throughout his life Ryan said that he has been involved in sports since his youth.
“I grew up with a really supportive family and I player sports just like everyone else,” Neiswender said. “I was pretty much involved in everything that my friends were, but as I grew up, they got faster and I didn’t get faster. That’s when we saw an article that introduced us to wheelchair basketball.”
The road to playing wheelchair basketball was not the easiest for Neiswender. As per usual, his school did not have a wheelchair basketball team, and he had to travel to find a team.
His first team that he played for was based in Philadelphia, which was an hour and a half commute for the Neiswender family every weekend for him to play. He then moved up to a team in Baltimore, which added another hour on to the drive. It was a huge commitment at the time and he said he was very grateful to have so much support from his family.
“As you can tell, my parents really supported me through all that and took the time to drive me down every weekend,” Neiswender said. “They went through long lengths to make sure I could play wheelchair basketball.”
His drive at such a young age led to Neiswender finding a path to college by using the sport that he loves. Upon signing to play at the University of Illinois, Neiswender became an instant star under head coach Matt Buchi’s system.
In just his sophomore year, Neiswender helped lead the Illini to a runner-up finish in the national title game, and moving forward Buchi is looking for more from Ryan during this season at Illinois.
“I can stick him in the position as a player-coach where if I knew we were in a tough situation and I needed to feed information to the team, I can use him to get that message through,” Buchi said. “I can really rely on him in those tight situations.”
As Neiswender is taking the next step in his collegiate career, he is also taking a large step in another area of his game. Along with the orange and blue, Neiswender is donning the red, white and blue on the court, representing Team USA.
He first represented the USA during his senior year in high school and has made multiple appearances on the qualifying squads and once traveled to Bogota, Colombia where Team USA won gold in the world championship qualifier, but Ryan has his sights set even higher.
“I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to try out again in January to hopefully make the Rio team,” Neiswender said. “My goal from a little kid until now has been to make a Paralympic team and this is kind of my first step and first opportunity to do so.”
Neiswender is well on his way to accomplishing his dreams, and all along the way he says that he has not been impaired by his handicap, and he believes that it has given him the ability to have a lasting impact on people.
“God’s given me the platform to motivate people to be physically active, to motivate people to show that if you have a disability that doesn’t define who you are.”
