Editor's note: this is part of a series of features being published over the next few weeks on the various sports which make up the 2007 Canada Winter Games.

Spectators coming out to watch the wheelchair basketball during the 2007 Canada Winter Games are likely going to find their 'jaws are going to drop', says Corey Smith, a member of Team Ontario.

'You can bounce (in the wheelchair) and move up and down the court without touching the wheels,' says Smith. 'You'll be watching it and you're kind of going to go How'd they do that?'

'Before they kind of judge it and think it's going to be boring, they should come out and see it,' he says. 'People love to watch it when they give it a chance.'

'They're not going to see these sad people confined to wheelchairs shooting at some five foot net,' agrees Ramesh Ferris, president of the Yukon Society Towards Accessible Recreation and Sport (Yukon STARS). 'They're going to see athletes confident in their abilities shooting at regulations nets.'

About 70 elite wheelchair competitors will be descending on the city, he says, adding he is hopeful it will inspire Yukoners to get out of their comfort zone and try something new.

'I hope they don't think that's cute' and then forget about it. I hope it's a spring board for making changes in our community,' says Ferris.

Nine coed teams will be competing in the round-robin style competition at the Canada Winter Games.

Though Yukon STARS runs a recreational wheelchair basketball program at Vanier Catholic Secondary School on Saturdays, the regular crowd of eight to 12 attendees didn't provide enough of a base for the territory to enter a team at the Games, says Ferris.

'There's a lack of education towards sports for people with disabilities (in the Yukon),' he says. 'We need to develop and foster these programs. There's a lot of work we need to do.'

Nova Scotia and the two other territories are also not entering a team for the 2007 Games.

Smith, 20, has been playing wheelchair basketball for about four years. He got involved in the sport after encephalitis and the Epstein-Barr virus put him in a wheelchair at the age of 14.

He has played on Canada's junior boy's team and is currently in the training program for the national teams and has his hopes set on going to the Olympics.

He admits he lives and breathes basketball at this point and trains up to four hours, four nights a week.

'I focus all my life basically on basketball right now, which is a lot,' Smith told the Star from his home in Ottawa.

The sport is a lot harder then one would expect, he says, and spectators will see a fast, competitive and engaging event when they come out to watch.

'There's a lot of strategy involved,' he says. Positioning on the court can mean everything.

'It's pretty technical,' agrees Jessica Des Mazes, 23, who will be playing on British Columbia's team.

But the basic skills and strategy in the game don't mean the sport isn't without its showmanship, says Des Mazes.

Players will balance on one wheel and take a shot, she says. Some will be able to hop their wheels over another player's and go right by, she adds. Others can turn on a dime.

'There's a huge amount of skill to being able to move around on the floor,' she says.

The fourth-year communications student at Simon Fraser University has only been playing wheelchair basketball for about eight months and is the only woman on the B.C. team.

Before being injured in a car accident on the way to fight a forest fire in the Northwest Territories in the summer of 2004, she had been a 'stand up player' in basketball.

The basic rules of the game are the same, she says, but the movements on the floor are different.

She says her coach is often still telling her to stop thinking like a stand up player.

'It's basketball at its best,' says Steven Bach, the coach of Team Alberta and president of the Canadian Wheelchair Basketball Association.

'There's limited opportunity for one-on-one play so it becomes very much a team game,' says Bach. 'You have to find ways to bring all five players into the sport.'

Picks and screens in setting teammates up for a shot, drive or pass are fundamental to the game, he says.

'It's just a really cool take on sort of a traditional sport,' says Des Mazes.

Teams use a classification system that determines the mobility status of team members on a scale of one through 4.5.

A class one athlete is typically a paraplegic whereas a class 4.5 is an able-bodied individual. The total value of the players' classification on the court cannot exceed 15.

'It makes it an equal playing field,' says Des Mazes. 'Everyone has a role on the floor. There's really not a huge advantage.'

On Team B.C. and Alberta there are four able-bodied players and eight confined to wheelchairs.

'It's totally open,' says Des Mazes. 'It brings people into contact with people from all walks of life and they learn we're all exactly the same.'

Opening the sport to everybody means knowledge from able-bodied basketball is also brought into the game, says Bach.

It also challenges the disabled players, he says. 'It raises the level of their game.'

Smith says the inclusion of able-bodied athletes makes it better for the sport and gets more people interested in the game.

He adds it gives him the opportunity to prove himself.

'I can show them I'm still an athlete,' he says, pointing out that it's a sport that demands a lot of skill and physical strength.

Canada is the best in the world when it comes to wheelchair basketball and there will be future Olympians on the court in Whitehorse, says Bach.

The men's team has won the gold medals at the Paralympic Games in 2000 and 2004. The women's did the same in 1992, 1996 and 2000.

Gold medals have also been won by Canada in 2006 at the Paralympic Cup, Kitakyushu Champions' Cup and the Americas Cup.

It was watching Chantal Petticlerc race to five gold medals in Athens' 2004 Games and the Canadian women's wheelchair team win gold that helped Des Mazes get through her seven months in the hospital after the accident.

'It was sort of positive reinforcement about life with a disability,' she says. 'I knew it was 100 per cent possible to live a completely fulfilling life afterward. I knew being in a wheelchair was not going to be the end of the world.'

Smith and Des Mazes agree it is their fierce competitiveness and their love of being physically active that drew them to the sport.

'I don't see us as a disabled sport,' says Bach. 'We just don't use runners. We use wheelchairs.'

British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec will be the teams to watch at the Games, he says. But Manitoba and Saskatchewan may well be in the battle for the top three.

Quebec is Ontario's main threat for winning gold, says Smith. But the province certainly plans to be on the podium at the end of the series.

B.C., however, hopes to be battling it out with Ontario, says Des Mazes.

'They're one of our two big threats,' she says pointing to Quebec as the other major competitor. 'I think we're going to do really well.'

It's a great opportunity to bring the sport to the forefront in the Yukon, adds Bach.

'I fully expect people will be absolutely enthralled once they see it,' he says. 'When people see this they are going to get excited and hopefully there will be a real boom for wheelchair sports in the territory.'