Hometown wheelchair basketball worlds will serve as celebration for Team Canada staff member Emma Shimizu – a committed community sport leader & cancer survivor

By Anfal Hanif

When Canada takes the court for the Ottawa 2026 IWBF Wheelchair Basketball World Championships, the focus will be on the athletes and the chase for a place on the podium.

There will be the speed and physicality of the sport, the pressure of the global stage and the energy of a home crowd.

Behind it all will be Ottawa’s Emma Shimizu.

As a high-performance coordinator with Wheelchair Basketball Canada, the 23-year-old works behind the scenes with Canada’s senior women’s team as it prepares for the Sept. 9-19 World Championships at TD Place and Carleton University.

For Shimizu, the tournament is also a unique chance to experience the sport she has built her career around at the highest international level in the city where her own story in sport began.

“It’s really exciting because it’s something that I get to share with my friends and family,” highlights the past hockey and ringette player, coach and para sport volunteer. “Even if I’m not on the court, I get the opportunity to expose my work in this really cool sport to the people that I care about and love in my life.”

Shimizu’s role is about making sure the athletes and coaches can focus on basketball and performing at their best. She handles transportation and accommodations, meals and schedules, apparel and whatever other day-to-day needs may arise.

That job can become more complicated in wheelchair basketball because athletes travel with specialized sport chairs. She’s dealt with lost equipment and, in one situation, had to find a welder after a chair was damaged during airline transportation.

“That’s kind of like on the ground, solving problems as they come up in real time,” outlines Shimizu, who also jumps in to track players’ fouls on the bench and verify the count with the statistics crew.

Shimizu’s path to Canada’s high-performance program began in community sport. She remembers skating on the ice at TD Place arena during Ottawa 67’s pre-game events when she was young.

“It’s exciting now,” she notes, “to be working in a different capacity, but in the same venue that I grew up in and around.”

While studying recreation and leisure at Algonquin College, Shimizu became heavily involved in Ottawa’s sports scene. She volunteered with Special Olympics Ontario programs, the Capital City Condors adaptive hockey team and Campfire Circle, which seeks to bring joy to kids affected by childhood cancer.

She had first-hand knowledge of that difficult reality, having been diagnosed with Stage 4 Lymphoma during her rookie season as a ringette player for the Nipissing University Lakers. What brought her happiness while she received chemotherapy was continuing to coach the East Ottawa Stars U13 ‘AA’ girls’ hockey team since that was often the only time she left home other than for treatments. The transformative power of sports and recreation is a message she’s shared as a survivor speaker for the Canadian Cancer Society and Relay for Life.

“I don’t necessarily think that I’m the same person I was before that,” indicates Shimizu, who deeply values her relationships. “It’s really easy to go into a job and start in and do your job and kind of leave. But I think I put a lot more effort into understanding and approaching and valuing the people that I work with.”

Shimizu was recognized as the Spirit of Sport Award winner by the Ottawa Sports Awards earlier this year as well as a Community Sport Hero by the Ottawa Sport Council, which also recently highlighted the community impact Ottawa has felt in hosting the World Championships.

Part of that was the numerous school visits Ottawa 2026 made to introduce wheelchair basketball to students, which Shimizu was involved in during her Algonquin College internship with Abilities Ottawa. Some students were hesitant when they first saw the sport chairs, she recalls, but after getting on the court, that changed.

“In the end, it’s always refreshing to hear the amount of people that really enjoyed it,” reflects Shimizu, who is also eager to have many local residents check out a sport they may have never seen before (her parents included).

“I hope that people make this trip out to come and see wheelchair basketball in person because I think it’s not a sport a lot of people have been exposed to,” she adds. “Once you watch it, I think it’s a really exciting spectator sport.”

The Canadian women and men will tip off their tournaments with back-to-back contests on the opening afternoon and evening at TD Place. Both teams are coming off fourth-place finishes at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.

There are no players from Ottawa in either Canadian lineup, but there will be many local representatives like Shimizu propelling Team Canada as they face 15 challengers in the men’s event and 11 in the women’s.

The women’s team will include international stars like Kady Dandeneau and Cindy Ouellet, plus three players making their World Championship debut.

“They can feed off of that. I also think that this group brings a lot of energy,” signals Shimizu, who knows her team’s goal is clear. “It’s a long tournament, and it’s just kind of focusing and having to show up at your best every single day. But if you ask any coach or any players, they want to medal.”