He’s back!
Kitchener’s Tyler Miller returns for Canada
Canada has once again called on Tyler Miller.
The Kitchener native, a fulltime member of the senior men’s national team since 2012, is expected to play a prominent role at this month’s International Wheelchair Basketball Federation world championship in Hamburg, Germany.
Canada opens the Aug. 16-26 tournament against Morocco, while the women’s team takes on Great Britain on the same day. Both 12-player rosters were unveiled this week by Wheelchair Basketball Canada.
“It’s not necessarily a surprise (to make the team), but it’s always a special feeling to be nominated to represent your country at an international event,” said the 34-year-old Miller in a telephone interview.
“It never gets old, and the fact that we’re a country that’s respected around the world, makes it really, really easy to don the maple leaf.”
Miller first represented Canada at the 2010 world championship in Birmingham, England, and later won gold at the 2012 Paralympics in London. His national team resumé also includes the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro and appearances at two Parapan American Games — 2011 in Guadalajara, Mexico, and 2015 in Toronto.
Miller was introduced to the sport in 2007, the same year he suffered an industrial accident that changed his life.
Just 23 at the time, he was working at Conestoga Cold Storage in Kitchener when a crane holding a 2,000-pound steel rack fell and crushed his back while severing his spinal cord.
A difficult period ensued but a persistent friend encouraged Miller to connect with the Twin City Spinners wheelchair basketball team and his competitive fuse was reignited.
He’s been playing ever since, and last year was an all-star performer for the Toronto Rollin Raptors of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association
Miller and his Canadian teammates, male and female, have been centralized since May at the national training centre in Scarborough. World championship preparations have included trips to Japan, Great Britain and Poland over the past two months and exhibition games against the visiting Dutch national team.
Travelling the world, said Miller, is an added bonus of playing for Canada.
“I have been to a lot of places that I would have never probably been to otherwise,” said Miller, who lists a visit to Flanders Field in Belgium as his most memorable experience.
“As a Canadian, it was a pretty emotional day. I will always have a special place in my heart for Belgium.”
Both Canadian teams will fly out of Toronto next week to begin final preparations for the world championship.
The men’s squad will be travelling to Italy, and the women head to France.
The current roster is a mix of youth and experience, with five players still around from the team that won Paralympic gold in London.
Veterans Patrick Anderson, who will turn 39 this month, and 41-year-old David Eng, the team’s elder statesman, also won gold at the 2006 world championship in the Netherlands.
At the other end of the spectrum, four players are making their national team debuts, including 18-year-old Garrett Ostepchuk.
The men’s team is attempting to rebound from a disappointing 11th-place finish in Rio de Janeiro and Miller believes the team has what it takes to turn in a top-three performance.
“Right now, I believe the top eight teams in the world are in a place where on any given night, any one of them can win,” said Miller.
“And I believe we’re a top-eight team, for sure.”
Nothing is etched in stone but Miller said the clock is likely winding down on his basketball career. He intends on sticking around long enough to play for Canada at the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo but that could be it.
Miller, an aspiring tool and die maker at the time of his accident, isn’t certain what direction his life will take after his playing days are over, but he does know he won’t be making that decision on his own.
Miller and fiancée Eva Papadopoulos, a Toronto teacher he met while doing a motivational speech to students, will marry in November, and his future wife has only made one request.
“She would like me to learn to speak Greek,” said Miller with a laugh. “At least try.”
Sixteen men’s teams and 12 women’s teams will compete at the world championships, with the Canadian women attempting to make their eighth consecutive podium appearance since the inaugural event in 1990. The women’s team has recorded five gold-medal performances during that span, and the current edition features five returning athletes from the team that struck gold in Toronto four years ago.