Josie Aslakson, Paralympic medalist and college basketball coach, wants to talk about music and poetry.

Aslakson’s desk is scattered with her own poetry manuscripts, hand-drawn basketball plays, and a loved journal. She is often found writing with a yellow pencil in her office, by the floor-to-ceiling window facing a palo verde tree.

She creates basketball plays and weaves the players together just as she entwines the words of a poem.

Aslakson, 29, helped Team USA to a silver medal at the Paris Paralympics this summer and is the head coach of the University of Arizona women’s wheelchair basketball team. She spends her 9-to-5 training her team of 13 players. 

After 5 p.m., she plays her acoustic guitar and gardens. She practices playing songs by her favorite artists, like Maggie Rogers, Lana Del Rey and Bon Iver. In her garden, she grows rosemary, lilacs, kale and tomatoes.

That creativity is fundamental to her coaching style.

“The creative side of me makes me a better coach, I’m not going into the gym strumming my guitar or writing poetry, but the fact that my brain is wired creatively makes me better at drawing up plays, or coming up with new ideas for the team,” Aslakson said.

The intersectionality of her creative side with her athletic side brought her to a place of contentment and is a critical part of her well-being.

“On one hand, basketball allowed me to reconnect with my body, and writing allowed me to reconnect with my mind,” said Aslakson.

On-court creativity

“Sports can be an art. Art is subjective, what you find as art, a beautiful play in basketball is a piece of art,” said Ted Aslakson, Josie’s father.

Josie sees her sport as an art form and is known as a creative coach and innovative player.

Even with a silver Paralympic medal, a bronze medal earned in Tokyo in 2021 and college basketball coaching success, Josie doesn’t believe basketball is her identity.

“I was always a half-art kid half-sports kid. … I don’t feel like I have to compromise either side of my identity,” said Josie. She finds a balance between having an athletic career and an artistic personal life by embracing both.

“Here in Tucson, I found the perfect fit, I can have a creative lifestyle, it’s a very artsy and fun place. But I am also able to have a sports career that is very fulfilling,” she said.

She credits her creativity to her coaching success.

“She is not like a coach I’ve had before…It’s always something new and always something creative during practices,” said Emilee Gustafson, a 2024 UA grad who played on the UA wheelchair basketball team.

Gustafson majored in fine arts and also feels her creative side influences her athletic side.

“The way I go about my art practice ties in how I play, I play with finesse, and it’s how I do my art as well,” said Gustafson.

That inspiration fuels the UA women’s wheelchair basketball team, which placed fourth at the 2024 national tournament and just began its season.

“I have found success being creative as a coach, when I am more open as a person and not so structured and old-school in a coaching mentality. … That idea of ‘you don’t do it my way’ is not going to work, that doesn’t work for this generation. They are very empathic and you have to build a relationship and build trust,” said Josie.

The creative side of Aslakson allows her to collaborate with assistant coach Courtney Ryan — also a two-time Paralympian — and together they create a “dynamic duo team,” said Gustafson.

“She is a very creative coach with what she can do and what she can come up with. She thinks of new ways to train our athletes at points where we are struggling in certain scenarios,” said Ryan.

Her singular coaching style gets noticed.

“She will read the game, it’s almost like a canvas, like a painting, she just lets it happen. It’s like contemporary art, she imparts that idea to her players,” Ted said. “I see her creative side flourish on the court as a player, and as a coach trying to impart that to her players.”

Discovering basketball

When Josie was 5, she was in a car accident in her hometown of Jordan, Minnesota. She was paralyzed from the waist down and was the only person injured. Her mother was driving.

Being the only kid in her hometown in a wheelchair, she grew up more introverted and learned to love art, she said.

“I was the kid who would sit and draw for hours quietly at my desk growing up, especially after the car accident,” said Josie.

“You either persevere or not. It’s a sink or swim, It’s on that spectrum, you’re either thriving or you’re not. She tackled it. Never complained. You know it was her reality,” her dad said. “I don’t know if it was a silver lining in the cloud or thunderstorm, her being injured so young, but that was her reality.”

Discovering wheelchair basketball at 13 was a new aspect of her life that allowed her to thrive.

“Basketball brought me back into my body because you have to connect when you’re playing sports. … It was a really good thing that I got into sports because I may have just stayed in that limbo of being unsure of myself,” said Josie.

As a creative person, Josie never wanted to fully give up that side of herself. In high school, she knew playing college basketball was an option because she was recruited. But she wanted to also explore her creative side.

From the fall of 2017 through the spring of 2018, she studied dramatic writing at New York University. However, she found it difficult to navigate being in a wheelchair in New York City. So she transferred to UA in the fall of 2019 to play basketball.

Today, she still embraces her love for writing. “I have been working on multiple poetry manuscripts, it’s something fun that can help me track back my journey through my early 20s until now … poetry is so abstract and just writing it down and not having the structured ways of sports involved at all, it’s so nice to not have any rules,” she said.

Growing community

As a kid, Josie commuted an hour’s drive to Golden Valley, Minnesota to The Courage Center, to play basketball, where she found a community for the first time.

As a coach at UA, she emphasizes the importance of this community. “I think a lot of our athletes find comfort in having people like them, they can branch out and meet friends, but they always know they have this group of athletes that live with a disability,” said Josie.

The UA women’s wheelchair basketball team continues to grow here.

“It’s a beautiful thing to be a part of … we are getting girls and women coming to us wanting to be coached by her, wanting to be a Wildcat,” said assistant coach Ryan.

Josie aims for more exposure and recognition for her team, which opens its season Oct. 25 at the University of Texas at Arlington. Goals this season include finishing among the top three teams nationally, she said.

“When I was young I don’t remember there being as many wheelchair Barbies, or commercials, or representation in the media at all, but now that is different,” she said.

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