Canada’s women’s wheelchair basketball team came within a single point of a world championship on home soil Saturday, falling 77-76 to the United States in a dramatic gold-medal game at TD Place. The loss brought Canada’s run at the 2026 IWBF Wheelchair Basketball World Championships to a heartbreaking end, but the final buzzer did little to quiet the home crowd. Fans applauding and cheering the Canadian players as they left the court with silver medals. “I’m incredibly sad, but I’m just also so grateful to be here and to be able to play on home soil,” Canadian player Arinn Young said after the game. “A lot of people doubted us, that we could even be here and to be able to still medal, even though it’s not gold, I’m just grateful for the hardware, to be honest with you.” Young finished with 30 points in the final, while teammate Kady Dandeneau led Canada with 34. Together, the pair accounted for 64 of Canada’s 76 points. The game remained close through the final moments before a late foul helped tip the result in favour of the Americans. Dandeneau said the Canadians were out of position on the decisive play while trying to secure a rebound. “At the end of the day, it didn’t fall our way,” she said. “I was trying to help our teammate get a rebound, and we ended up with a foul… and that lost us the game.” Despite the disappointment, both players praised the crowd that packed TD Place for the championship final. Young, who has now played in two world championships on Canadian soil, described the fans as the team’s “sixth man.” “The energy we can feed off of them is huge,” she said. “I can’t thank them enough for coming and supporting us.” Dandeneau said many of the people in attendance may have been seeing wheelchair basketball in person for the first time. “They were amazing. They were in it with us,” she said. “You could hear them every step of the way.” That support extended beyond the final buzzer. One young Canadian fan summed up the mood after the narrow defeat. “It was really fun. The atmosphere’s great,” he said. “Too bad they lost, but all that matters is that they tried their best.” Saturday’s medal game capped more than a week of competition in Ottawa, with 336 athletes from 19 countries taking part in the world championships. Wheelchair Basketball Canada CEO Wendy Gittens said the response from the city throughout the tournament exceeded expectations. “We’ve seen great support. We have a great crowd out today on the final day of the women’s gold medal game,” Gittens said before the final. “The teams have felt very welcomed everywhere they’ve gone. I can’t say enough good things about Ottawa fans for coming out to support wheelchair basketball.” Gittens said hosting an international para-sport competition also give Canadians an opportunity to see the level of athleticism involved in wheelchair basketball. “I think we’ve opened people’s eyes around the skill and athleticism that the sport is played with,” she said. “These are high-performance athletes and this is a sport.” Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden was also at TD Place Saturday and called the championships a “world-class event.” “It’s great to see people coming out and cheering on, maybe for the first time, maybe they’re longtime fans of Wheelchair Basketball Canada,” van Koeverden said. For Canada’s women, however, the final day ended with mixed emotions, disappointment after coming within a point of gold, but a silver medal and a standing ovation from the home crowd after their run to the world championship final.
