Courtesy: Vicki Hall, Calgary Herald

More than anything, Chad Jassman always wanted to fly.

So upon graduating from high school, the Saskatchewan farm boy enrolled in the aviation program at Medicine Hat College. To pay the bills, he taught snowboard lessons at Hidden Valley Ski Resort and entertained hockey fans as Rroary, the much-loved feline mascot of the Medicine Hat Tigers.

All of that ceased to exist on the day in 2004 when Jassman broke his back in a car accident on the way to the ski hill. A passenger in the back seat, the collision rendered Jassman a paraplegic.

He could no longer dream of flying commercially. He could no longer make the kids laugh by doing backflips in his Rroary costume. He could no longer work as a snowboard instructor.

“You’re not sure what you can do in life anymore,” Jassman says over the phone from the national wheelchair basketball championship in Richmond, B.C. “It’s definitely tough on somebody who is 20 years old.”

During a four-month rehab stint at Foothills Hospital, Jassman went down to the gym a couple times to shoot hoops in his new wheelchair.

Little did he know that was the start of a new career. A new purpose.

Now 28, the Calgary resident plays professional wheelchair basketball in Trier, Germany. He is also destined for the 2012 London Paralympics from Aug. 29 to Sept. 9 as a member of the Canadian wheelchair basketball team.

He might not be piloting the plane, but Jassman has more frequent flyer miles than he ever imagined.

“Realistically, if you had told me the day before I got hurt that I would be living in Germany eight months a year, playing wheelchair basketball professionally and travelling the world playing with Team Canada — I never would have believed you,” he says. “I can’t complain. Basketball is one of the things that pretty much saved me.”

Before the injury, Jassman considered himself an athletic sort. A self-described goon in hockey, he loved the rough stuff and stayed away from basketball because of his propensity to pick up fouls for “incidental” contact.

All that changed when Jassman lost the use of his legs.

“I really like the physical aspect of wheelchair basketball,” he says. “You’re taking the man out. When I play with Team Canada, my job is basically to get out there and grind and throw the big guys off their game.

“I love the crashing. Some times, you’ll see the sparks flying off wheels when they’re rubbing together. I absolutely love it.”

In wheelchair basketball, players are assessed a classification number to denote their degree of disability.

The highest number of 0.5 goes to the players with most serious physical challenges. The lowest score is 4.5 and goes to players with little to no disability.

Jassman is ranked 1.5, which gives him the highest classification of any Canadian Paralympian in the past 12 years, according to head coach Jerry Tonello.

In international wheelchair basketball, the total number of points on the court assigned for each of the five players may not exceed 14 points at any one time.

“A lot of times, players who have a higher classification and are more paralyzed are a little bit more cautious and careful when they play,” Tonello says. “Not Chad. Chad throws caution to the wind. He definitely does not play with any regard to his disability.

‘‘And if he ends up on the floor, then so be it. It’s not a problem for him.”

If he falls, Jassman just gets back up. Perseverance, he believes, is the key.

After all, the Calgary Grizzlies product failed to make Team Canada in his first two tryouts. Instead of quitting, he just kept on honing the finer details of his game.

“When Chad came along, he was a raw recruit,” Tonello says. “The one thing everybody respects about Chad is how quickly he worked to improve.”

That improvement skyrocketed when Jassman turned pro last year in Germany.

“We’re on the court practising five days a week,” he says. “You’re getting 500 fans out for every day and they’re selling T-shirts and coffee mugs with your face on it.

“I like the lifestyle.’’

Canada is considered a traditional powerhouse in wheelchair basketball, with back-to-back Paralympic gold medals in Sydney and Athens and silver four years ago in Beijing.

Heading into London, Canada’s ranking has dipped to seventh.

“I think we’re seventh-place material,” Jassman says. “We’re definitely striving for gold, and we all believe we can win a gold medal. But having said that, the world is getting tighter.

“Still, I think we have a great chance to win gold.”

As for flying, Jassman heads out to Black Diamond to hang-glide (with hand controls) in his spare time. He plans to get his gliding licence one of these days — if he can ever fit it in.

“As many doors as my injury has closed for me,’’ he says, “it’s opened up two for every one.”