A world-renowned wheelchair basketball player from Watford competed in her fifth Paralympic Games last month.
Helen Freeman first began playing wheelchair basketball with the London Titans junior team in Stanmore at age 12.
Since then, Helen has attended five European championships and competed in the Paralympic Games for the first time in 2008, where at age 18 she was the youngest player on the team.
After gaining an athletic scholarship to study at the University of Illinois, she graduated with a degree in Kinesiology and a Masters’ degree in Business Administration.
She has won a host of silverware, including bronze at the 2011 St Catherines U25 Women’s World Championships, six bronze medals across several years at the European Championships, and silver at the 2018 Hamburg Women’s World Championships.
Helen competed in the Rio 2016 Paralympics, where the team just lost out on a bronze medal to the Netherlands.
Last month, the basketball star competed in her fifth Paralympic Games in Paris, where she is now the most experienced player on the squad.
In an interview with FocusHoops prior to the games, Helen said: “I’m excited! Just to have some of the guys for their first Paralympics is keeping it fresh and exciting.
“Back in Beijing, I was really lucky to play with Anne Wild, Caroline Matthews and Sarah Grady. The talent we had was always there, but now we have more support with all these training camps, more full-time players.”
As WATFORDnews goes to print, the GB Women’s team defeated Spain in the first preliminary round, lost to Canada in the second, beat the People’s Republic of China in the third, and will face USA in the quarter-finals.
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