Krempien gearing up for fifth Paralympic games in Beijing
(Taken from the August 08, 2008 Saint City News)
ByTodd Pruner
Staff Writer Saint City News		    

Wheelchair basketball veteran Jennifer Krempien is less than a month away from her fifth Paralympics Games.J Krempien

The 2008 Beijing Paralympics begin Sept. 7.

The St. Albert native will be part of Team Canada, who will be looking to rebound after a less than peak performance in Athens in 2004. In her first three Paralympics, Canada captured gold, but had to settle for bronze in Greece.

"It's exciting," the 33-year-old said. "I'm excited to be a part of such a great team and I'm really excited to see what Beijing has done since January, and just excited to play, most of all."

Team Canada won gold in January at the Gold Luck Beijing International Invitational tournament, Krempien's 11th gold medal in her 16 years on the national team. She was impressed with the Chinese facilities.

"They had just opened up the venue that we'll play our quarterfinals and final in and it was fantastic," she said. "The Bird's Nest was just being finished and the Olympic Green, they were just putting the finishing touches on it. The venues were just fantastic."

The Beijing games will be the first time Krempien will be competing with fellow St. Albertan Tara Feser in the Paralympics. Feser, 28, has won four Canadian Wheelchair Basketball League championships with the Edmonton Inferno, but just made the national team this year. Krempien's advice to a newcomer like Feser is to take it all in.

"I think, for your first Paralympics, it's important to just embrace the experience and to not go with any preconceived ideas or notions, but just be willing to sort of take it all in, and there's so much going on," she said. "To enjoy each moment, but also know your boundaries of what you need to do to get yourself ready to perform."

Krempien got her start in wheelchair basketball when she was attending sport camps at eight years old. By 12 or 13, she was focusing more and more on basketball, and by 15, she was playing basketball exclusively.

For her first Paralympics, she never expected to be there at just 17 years old. She had been practicing with the Inferno and hoped to make it to Atlanta for the Paralympics in 1996, but didn't think reaching Barcelona was realistic.

"I thought I was too young," said Krempien. "So my goal, actually, was to get to the '96 Olympics, but one of the 12 athletes had to withdraw for personal reasons and they needed someone in my position and I got a phone call saying, 'Do you think you could help us out in Barcelona?' 'Sure! I could probably do that.'"

She added that with everything being so new for her, it was an unbelievable experience.

"I was so overwhelmed with everything - the game, the environment, the experience," Krempien said. "Everything was a brand new experience. It was really invigorating each day ... seeing the fans for the first time. Now it seems old hat, but there are moments that are very exciting and invigorating still."

In recent years, the University of British Columbia (UBC) graduate student has been enjoying seeing the accomplishments of teammates like Danielle Peers.

"For me in Athens, it was great just for me to see Danielle Peers have a great tournament, and then to see her win the MVP in 2006 (at the Gold Cup World Championships in the Netherlands)," Krempien said. "I had coached her and played with her through her first day on the wheelchair basketball court."

Peers had played stand-up basketball for the Grant MacEwen College Griffins before muscular dystrophy made her switch to wheelchair basketball in 1999.

Krempien has been in a wheelchair since she was five when her arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a disorder of the connections betweens veins and arteries, ruptured in her spinal cord. Her classification for basketball is 1, on a scale of 1 to 4.5 where 4.5 is a minimal disability.

"I don't have trunk function and I can't rotate in my chair, because I don't have the muscles to stabilize and rotate," she said.

Feser is a 4.5. The total number for players on the court for one team cannot exceed 14.

The rules for wheelchair basketball are mostly the same as for able-bodied basketball, with a couple of exceptions.

"The only difference is the chair is considered part of the body," Krempien said. "So you can't just, sort of, ram into somebody like you can in rugby. So with foul contacts, the principles are the same, but you just include the chair as part of the body."

You are allowed to double dribble, but for every two pushes of the chair, you have to either pass or shoot.

In addition to studying for her master of sciences in human nutrition at UBC, she is also a clinical dietician at the B.C. Children's Hospital.

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