The month of October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and CSU East Bay held a weeklong celebration that included hosting the Golden State Road Warriors Wednesday. The CSUEB men’s basketball team played an exhibition game against the Golden State Road Warriors.

The Golden State Road Warriors are a wheelchair basketball team that is part of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. They became affiliated with the NBA team, the Golden State Warriors, in the early 90’s and have taken part in halftime shows for the team and have received the chance to play with renowned Golden State Warrior guard Klay Thompson.

The team and league consist of players with a wide variety of disabilities, but who all use a wheelchair.

“There are a lot of people with spinal cord injuries who are partially or completely paralyzed from a certain level down,” said Golden State Road Warrior, Mickey Kay who has been playing with this team for five seasons. “People with single leg amputees, double leg amputees, all sorts of disabilities play in this league.”

Kay, who uses a wheelchair after a bicycle accident in November of 2004, believes this exhibition against CSUEB was a great chance to get people a look at wheelchair basketball.

“With disability awareness month happening it was a perfect opportunity for us to come out, bring our chairs, bring our guys, meet everybody, show them the game and get some people introduced to it who maybe knew nothing,” said Kay. “For the most part people don’t know about wheelchair basketball and it’s great today because we get to play against the men’s team here on campus and show them a little bit of what the sports about. It’s fun.”

After playing the CSUEB men’s basketball team, anyone who wanted to play had a chance to experience wheelchair basketball.

Golden State Road Warrior, Marcus Oden thinks exhibitions like the one held at CSUEB help educate the public about wheelchair basketball.

“Today we were putting on a basketball demo…and getting people to understand just because we have a physical disability, we are still able to do similar things, play sports, and so on,” said Oden, who is a double amputee after a train accident at the age of nine. “We really just want to get it out in the community that wheelchair basketball is here and it is free to come to all of our home games,” he said.

The Golden State Road Warriors will begin their regular season in December and will hold their home games at San Jose State gym as well as CSUEB’s. The team will also travel to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, and Utah to play their opponents. As well as playing the end of the season tournament in places like Louisville, Ky.

NWBA is very similar to the NCAA version of basketball with a few minor changes. According to the NWBA official rules, a player can stay in the lane for four seconds versus three and a player must dribble for every two pushes of the chair.

Golden State Road Warrior guard, Arthur Renowitzsky has played wheelchair basketball for five years after sustaining a gunshot wound that left him with a spinal cord injury. Renowitzsky has since started a non-profit organization to help combat situations like his own.

“It’s called The Life Goes On organization,” said Renowitzsky. “It’s a non-profit organization against gun violence and promoting positively towards the youth. I go to a lot of high schools, middle schools, juvenile halls and share my story and to promote positivity out there.”

As an athlete his entire life, Renowitzsky takes a lot of pride in continuing to be an athlete through playing in the NWBA.

“Basketball, especially wheelchair basketball means a whole lot to me because growing up I played a lot of sports,” said Renowitzky. “I played basketball, football; those were my two main loves growing up. So to be able to play wheelchair basketball after my injury and know this sport and be able to be around a bunch of great guys who know what I’ve been through is great.”