Optimism Drives Him, Team To Final Four Wheelchairs And All

Few people have a more positive outlook about sports than John Rees.

His optimism bubbles over when Rees talks about wrestling and his current passion, the Spokane St. Lukes Cyclones wheelchair basketball team.

Rees and the Cyclones are in Nashville this weekend playing in their first-ever National Wheelchair Basketball Assoc. Final Four after nearly a quarter-century of trying.

“We’re going to come out with a trophy and expect to win that thing,” said the Cyclones’ player-coach before the team departed.

That kind of optimism is how Rees, who has been a paraplegic since contracting polio as a child, became a varsity wrestler at Central Valley High School, a competitive gymnast at Eastern Washington University and then established the Valley’s first junior high wrestling dynasty in the 1970s and ‘80s while coaching at Evergreen Junior High. At one time, his Evergreen teams went undefeated for five straight years.

It’s also why he’s been successful in the challenging sport of wheelchair basketball.

“I love athletics,” Rees said in an interview five years ago. “And I’m used to knocking my head against a stone wall.”

Polio left him with limited use of his legs. It didn’t prevent the 1969 Central Valley graduate from wrestling in high school or competing in gymnastics at Eastern Washington.

Forced to start a wrestling match seated on the mat, he was at a distinct disadvantage and had limited success.

“It’s a leg sport,” said Rees.

He tried wrestling at Eastern, but got beat up in the sport and switched to gymnastics.

Walking with the aid of crutches had developed his upper body strength.

“Coach talked me into taping my legs together and I became a top rings specialist,” he recalled. “There was no weight in my legs so giants and iron crosses were easy.”

But it has been wheelchair basketball that leveled the playing field for Rees.

“Wheelchair sports came along and, wow, I was competing with people who were the same,” he said.

When asked to play on the original team that performed an exhibition at EWU in 1972, Rees said he was at first reluctant because of the stigma of being in a wheelchair.

The Cyclones - known then as the Coyotes - were a haven for crippled Vietnam veterans who used the sport as a means to release hostility, he said.

As the team has evolved into a national finalist, Rees has done his part as both player and coach.

“After playing 24 years,” he said. “We’re at the dance.”

Rees, 47, got polio when he was 1 years old.

“The vaccine just came out and we didn’t quite trust it,” he said.

He taught and coached at Evergreen and later at Horizon junior highs for 18 years until post-polio syndrome forced him to retire in 1991.

He taught again in 1994 and made it through two-thirds of a year before post-polio syndrome recurred.

But it can’t keep him away from the Cyclones.

“I’m supposed to quit, according to the docs, but I’m still getting in there,” he said.

And he wouldn’t mind becoming a junior high wrestling coach again to provide a challenge for Dave Smith’s current Valley dynasty at Mountain View Middle School.

“I could get back into it,” he said, “and give Smitty a go.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo