Bridie Kean

Bridie Kean

2012 Australian Paralympic Team portrait of Kean
Personal information
Nationality  Australia
Born (1987-02-27) 27 February 1987
Parkdale, Victoria, Australia
Sport
Country Australia
Sport Wheelchair basketball
Disability class 4.0
Event(s) Women's team
Club Minecraft Comets
Medal record
Wheelchair basketball
Paralympic Games
2008 Beijing Women's wheelchair basketball
2012 London Women's wheelchair basketball

Bridie Kean (born 27 February 1987) is an Australian wheelchair basketball player. She won a bronze medal at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing and a silver medal at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.

Personal

Kean was born 27 February 1987.[1][2][3] When she was two, her feet were amputated due to meningococcal septicaemia.[1] She is nicknamed Bird because her friend Kate Dunstan in high school thought it was funny that her name sounded like Bird. Then, when she moved to the United States, her friends struggled to pronounce her first name correctly – it rhymes with "tidy" – when she was living there.[1] And so, the nickname stuck. Her hometown is Parkdale, Victoria. Bridie currently resides in the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. An award in Kean's honour, acknowledging qualities of compassion and bravery, is each year presented to a student at Kilbreda College.[4] She did a gap year in England in 2005.[5] She has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.[2] In 2012, she lived in Alexandra Headland, Queensland.[3] In 2013, Bridie graduated with a Masters of Public Health from the University of Queensland.[5] In 2015, she was working on her PhD in Health Promotion at the University of the Sunshine Coast.[6]

Wheelchair basketball

Kean is a 4 point player,[2][3][7] who plays as a forward.[8] When she was 15, she was encouraged to take up wheelchair basketball by Liesl Tesch. She was invited to a training camp,[6] and started playing the sport on the state and national level in 2003.[5] In 2011/2012, the Australian Sports Commission gave her a A$17,000 grant as part of their Direct Athlete Support (DAS) program.[9]

University

Kean had a wheelchair basketball scholarship with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign that ended in 2010.[5][10]

Club

Kean made her Women's National Wheelchair Basketball League (WNWBL) debut in 2007.[5] In 2012, she played club basketball for the Brisbane-based Minecraft Comets.[2][8] That season, she was the team's captain.[5][11] Since September 2012, she plays for Hamburger SV, which returned to Germany's top league after a two season absence.[12][13][14] Hamburger SV won the national championship for the eighth time in 2013.[15] In 2014 she spearheaded the Minecraft Comets to their first ever national title win,[6] which was clinched by a crucial three point field goal by Kean in the final stages.[16]

National team

Kean at a game in Sydney in 2012

She made her national team debut in 2007 when she competed in the IWBF Qualification tournament.[5] She was selected to represent Australia at the 2009 Four Nations tournament in Canada, one of six players who played for the Dandenong Rangers in the WNWBL.[17] In July 2010, she played in a three-game test series against Germany.[18] In 2010, she was a member of the team that played in the Osaka Cup.[19] She represented Australia at the 2010 World Championships where her team finished fourth.[3]

Paralympics

She was part of the bronze medal-winning Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team, known as the Gliders,[20] at the 2008 Summer Paralympics.[3][21] Her team defeated Canada 53-47 in earning their medal. She said of her team's 2008 performance, "We worked together as a team really well and our medal is a credit to a lot of hard work and dedication."[5]

In October 2011, she was named as part of the senior national squad that would compete at the Paralympic qualifying tournament for the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.[22] She was the captain of the Gliders at the 2012 Summer Paralympics.[23] In the gold medal game against Germany women's national wheelchair basketball team at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, she played 13:02 minutes.[24] Her team lost 44-58, but earned a silver medal. She scored 1 point and had four rebounds in the game.[24]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bridie Kean.
  1. 1 2 3 "Bridie Kean". Australian Paralympic Committee. Retrieved 21 March 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Bridie Kean". London2012.com. Archived from the original on 16 September 2012. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Wheelchair Basketball". Media Guide, London 2012 Paralympic Games. Homebush Bay, New South Wales: Australian Paralympic Committee. 2012. pp. 92–99 [98].
  4. ↑ "VIRTUAL HONOURBOARD - WHOLE SCHOOL AWARDS". Kilbreda College. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Bridie Kean" (PDF). Queensland: Sporting Wheelies. 2012. Retrieved 17 September 2012.
  6. 1 2 3 "Bridie one of world’s best after late start to her sport". Sunshine Coast Daily. 6 November 2014. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
  7. ↑ "2010 WC Team". Basketball Australia. Retrieved 18 November 2011.
  8. 1 2 "Women's Wheelchair Basketball: Australia". London2012.com. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
  9. ↑ "Grant Funding Report". Bruce, Australian Capital Territory: Australian Sports Commission. Retrieved 15 September 2012.
  10. ↑ Basketball Australia (20 May 2010). "Shelley farewells stellar college career".
  11. ↑ "MineCraft Comets". Sporting Wheelies. Retrieved 2012-09-16.
  12. ↑ "Hamburger Sport-Verein e. V.: Spielkader 2012/2013" (in German). Rollstuhlbasketball Bundesliga. Retrieved 2 November 2012.
  13. ↑ "HSV-Rollstuhlbasketball" (in German). Retrieved 2 November 2012.
  14. ↑ Sievers, Bodo. "Ausführliche Statistiken für HSV Hamburg (1. Bundesliga)" (in German). DRS FB Rollstuhlbasketball. Retrieved 2 November 2012.
  15. ↑ [http://www.drs-rollstuhlbasketball.de/index.php?id=newsartikel&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=837&cHash=d60babfafb8b9e7d76b647c3467ccc28 "Hamburger SV ist Deutscher Damenmeister 2013"] (in German). DRS Fachbereich Rollstuhlbasketball. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  16. ↑ "MineCraft Comets win historic WNWBL title in a thriller". Sporting Wheelies. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
  17. ↑ McLeod, Phil (June 28, 2009). "Hoop dreams rolling along". The Journal (Dandenong, Australia: Fairfax Community Newspapers). 1553261. Retrieved 17 September 2012.
  18. ↑ Shevelove, Marty (2012-09-13). "Heading to world meet". Dandenong Leader. Retrieved 2012-09-17.
  19. ↑ Nageshwar, Pranesh (1 February 2010). "Back-to-back titles the goal for Hills Hornets". Hills Shire Times. Retrieved 17 September 2012.
  20. ↑ McGarry, Andrew (4 September 2008). "Event guide: Wheelchair basketball". ABC. Retrieved 9 September 2011.
  21. ↑ "Basketball Chronology". Basketball Australia. 2010. Retrieved 9 September 2011.
  22. ↑ "Games wheelchair Basketball Squads Named". Nine MSN. Retrieved 27 July 2012.
  23. ↑ "Australia wheelchair basketball squad". Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  24. 1 2 "Gold Medal Game". London: London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. 7 September 2012. Archived from the original on 9 September 2012. Retrieved 15 September 2012.

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, October 15, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.