Family Jewells
Jamey Jewells and husband Adam Lancia balancing basketball, family in preparation for Parapan Am Games
Jamey Jewells balancing basketball, family in preparation for Parapan Am Games.
Canada’s women’s senior wheelchair basketball team has a motto: “stay family, love the game and embrace the challenge.”
Team member Jamey Jewells of Donkin says it’s become gospel with her teammates, and they’ve been a family on and off the court. Canada is the defending world champions, winning the title last summer in Toronto.
Family and basketball have been major themes in Jewells’ life. She and husband Adam Lancia, a member of the men’s national team, have done their best to juggle their training as national-level athletes with married life and parenthood.
They’re hoping the sacrifice will pay off next week in Toronto at the 2015 Parapan Am Games, as each team competes for both a medal and a spot at the 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“That’s what we’re focusing on first and foremost,” said the 25year-old Jewells. The top four women’s teams advance to the Olympics, while the top two men’s clubs earn a berth.
“We want to qualify for Rio and anything else is a bonus.”
Jewells and Lancia first met briefly in 2009 in Saskatoon, Sask., but would reconnect overseas in 2011. She was living in Germany at the time, and he was in Spain. Both got into the sport of wheelchair basketball in different ways. Jewells was injured in a car accident in 2003 and started later in life, while Lancia was born without legs below the knees and has been playing since he was nine.
They started dating, and their relationship — with basketball as the starting point — blossomed from there. The couple married in 2013 in Port Morien. Two years ago, their daughter, Lennyn, was born.
Jewells and Lancia can’t say enough about the support they’ve received from family who have gone above and beyond to take care of their daughter while they travel and train. They live in Scarborough, a kilometer away from Lancia’s parents, Elizabeth and Guy. Jewells’ parents, Eddie and Norita, recently took care of Lennyn for three weeks in Cape Breton while they were overseas. Eddie even flew to Toronto with Lennyn and will be joined by Norita in the coming days.
“Now that she’s older and she’s cognitively aware that mum and dad are leaving, it’s a little bit harder because she doesn’t want us to leave, but we have an amazing support system,” said Jewells.
The couple approaches the Parapan Am Games busier than ever. The past six months have included trips to Japan and Ger- many and centralization camps in Scarborough and Winnipeg. The two are currently in St. Catharines, Ont., for their final tune-up before next week’s big event.
“It is a separate and sort of tandem preparation,” said Lancia, 35, a Scarborough native and member of the senior national team since 2001. “When neither of our teams are in a training camp situation, we’ll go and shoot around together. It’s a unique dynamic because what other married couple can do that and understand where the other person comes from?”
Both Canadian teams enter the Parapan Am Games as medal favourites. Although things are a bit more wide open on the women’s side, the men’s main competition will come from the United States and Mexico.
“We’re ready to go,” said Lancia. “I’d say if you ask either of our teams whether we’d be OK with starting tomorrow, you’d have people in jerseys and shorts quicker than you’d imagine.”
The national teams opens play on Aug. 8. The women will play Guatemala, while the men challenge Venezuela. The women’s final is set for Aug. 14, while the men’s championship is Aug. 15.