A torn piece of paper with words scrawled as reminders rested in Joel Ewert's lap after his first ever match at the Canada Winter Games.
They helped the 15-year-old wheelchair basketball player cut through the noise of Monday's rowdy crowd: Calm. Sure. Focused. Trust myself.
"Every time I came off, I took a look at it and just made sure that I was being these four things, being in my optimal state," said Ewert after Team B.C.'s 61-29 win over Team Manitoba in the sport's first game of the week.
"It's just a couple key words that will keep me composed."
A 10-year veteran of the sport, Ewert has been working toward this day for the past three years.
"I'm just really excited about achieving that goal, being able to represent my home town on my home court," said Ewert, who is one of two Prince George players on Team B.C., along with Avril Harris, who recited the Athletes' Oath at the opening ceremony.
"It's a once in a lifetime experience, especially being from Prince George, there's never going to be a big tournament up here most likely."
Early in the first quarter, fourth-ranked B.C. took a 10-point lead, and that gap never shrank.
Ranked eighth of nine teams, it is a first Games for all of Manitoba's players, who had the full support of fans. The audience's loud chants were only muffled by their own banging on cow bells as a cheering aid.
"The crowd was great. I think as the game went on, we learned how to feed off the energy," said Ewert of the full stands at Duchess Park secondary school. "We were nervous and a little all over the place but we were eventually able to use our energy to our advantage at the end of the game."
Ewert had two assists and two rebounds in the 18 minutes he played for B.C.
"I'm one of the guys who will do the dirty work that no one will see. I set a lot of picks," he said. "I won't show up much in the score sheet but if you have a trained eye, you can see what I do."
The Harris family introduced him to the sport at age five and Ewert, who has cerebral palsy, said he's been hooked ever since.
"It's helped with my self-confidence a lot. It's given me something to do," said the Prince George secondary school student. "I'm a pretty competitive guy. I've grown up around an athletic family, so to have my own sport to play is something special."
A mixed sport, wheelchair basketball has no requirement for the number of women or men that must be on the floor at a given time. Rather, players receive classifications based on their functioning capacity, from 1.0 for those with limited mobility (like Ewert) to 4.5 for able-bodied players. The maximum number of points a team can have on the floor at one time is 15.
Teams that have female players on the floor are allowed one additional point to account for the men's physical advantages, like height.
Wheelchair basketball rules are basically the same as stand-up basketball except there is no double dribble and a player is allowed two pushes of the wheel before it's considered traveling. The hoops are the same height, the court the same length, and the players are not shy about wrestling in the key for rebounds, overturned chairs and all.
Ewert said he loves working as a team and does what he can to keep team spirits up.
"I'm a pretty energetic guy so for my warm-up I like to get the team fired up. If there's a song going in the dressing room I'll sing and I'll try to lighten the mood."
For the rest of the week, that energy is all trained on the team's dream of gold.
"It's been a couple years in the making and we've all been working really hard," Ewert said. "I think we're ready to go."
