Friday, October 24, 2003

By Chuck Finder, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

They found themselves sidling up alongside one another at an Eagles-Steelers exhibition in August, the scoreboard end zone being the place for handicapped seating at Heinz Field.

They found themselves heading to the same international destination yesterday.

"I actually sat next to her randomly," Penn State senior Jeff Hantz of Latrobe said of CCAC junior Kelly Timms of Arlington. "That's how I found out she was going to the World Wheelchair Games."

Hantz and Timms, two Western Pennsylvanians who made their way into field events almost by accident, departed yesterday for Christchurch, New Zealand, with about 1,200 other athletes for the competition, which starts tomorrow and is sponsored by the International Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Sports Federation.

For Hantz, it's the first big stop on the way to the Paralympics next fall in Athens, Greece. For Timms, it's a potential steppingstone to that same prestigious competition. For both, it's their inaugural international athletic adventure.

The farthest from home Hantz had been before this was Enid, Okla., in June. Enid played host to the U.S. championships where Hantz achieved the qualifying mark for the 2004 Paralympics. Timms participated in that meet as well and won all three field events (javelin, discus and shot put), although she has been as far as Seattle for the junior national championships.

"We didn't think too much about it," said her father and coach, Paul Timms, about winning three events in Oklahoma. "The second week of August, the people from Wheelchair Sports USA -- which is the governing body -- called us up and said, 'We're putting together a team of U.S. athletes to go to the World Wheelchair Games. Would you like to go?' It took us about two seconds to decide."

Hantz's 31.52-meter discus throw at Oklahoma qualified him for the Paralympics, though his personal-best of 32.86 would have earned him a bronze at the 2002 World Wheelchair Games, he said. "Discus is the only one I have any hopes of medaling in," said Hantz, who, like Timms, also heaves the shot put and javelin.

Hantz, born without thigh bones, tried wrestling as a youth in the Greater Latrobe school district. He played in the pep band at Nittany Lions basketball games, which is where Terri Lucas first spotted him racing home one winter night a few years ago and drafted him for the wheelchair sports she directs at Penn State. Hantz quickly became an elite athlete in the sport.

"The first time is tough," Lucas said of international competition that will include a U.S. delegation of only 30 athletes, "because of travel, getting rest, learning not to sightsee too much. But he's very focused. I think he'll do pretty well."

Timms, afflicted with spina bifida, began racing at about age 5 after watching the Pittsburgh Marathon on television. She became a six-time Great Race wheelchair winner. Surgery for scoliosis at age 15 put a nearly three-year crimp in her athletic career. Her first competition after that was the junior championships in Seattle, and "she realized how much ground she had lost," her father-coach said. So Timms changed her specialty from racing to the javelin, shot put and discus, events in which she will compete -- along with the pentathlon, which includes 200- and 1,500-meter races -- at the games.

"Getting out of school first semester is a plus," said Timms, who withdrew from CCAC a week before it started. "Got to make it up in January, though. But it's worth it."

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