University of Alabama women’s wheelchair basketball team wins 3rd national title in a row

Here is a question you can “stump” your friends and co-workers at the next Trivia Night: What Alabama athletic program has won the most national titles from 2009 to 2022? 

It is not football. Answer: The UA Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Team.

Thanks to a buzzer beater by Lindsey Zurbrugg, the Crimson Tide women’s wheelchair basketball team won its eighth national title Saturday night with a 50-48 victory over Illinois.

The title is the Tide’s 3rd in row (COVID canceled 2020) and eighth overall. This string of national championship titles would make Coach Saban proud — 2009, 2010, 2011, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022. 

Seeded No. 1 in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association Women’s National Tournament Bracket the defending national champions took down No. 2 Illinois at the championship game in Arlington, Texas. 

Alabama and Illinois had previously met five times on the season with the Crimson Tide taking four of the five games. The team finished the season with a  25-3 record, including a 13-game winning streak.

Where Legends Are Made

Created in 2003, the University of Alabama Adapted Athletics program is one of the most successful in the nation. In addition to the women’s wheelchair basketball program, the men play wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis. In 2025, Bama is adding wheelchair track teams. 

This past weekend, the men’s wheelchair basketball team lost a hard-fought National Championship title game to University of Texas- Arlington.

The University of Alabama Adapted Athletics program has earned sixteen national championship titles across the three sports and graduated 56 students in undergraduate, masters and Ph.D. programs. 

According to the program, in January 2018 UA opened a $10 million facility designed for and dedicated to the Adapted Athletics program; the first of its kind on a college campus in the United States. October 2021 marked the opening of the Parker-Haun Tennis Facility, another first for collegiate adapted sports. 

The University of Alabama’s motto in their marketing is “Where Legends Are Made.” The women’s wheelchair basketball team and the entire Adapted Athletic program proves that statement.

Have you ever attended a wheelchair basketball game? Tag @Thebamabuzz on social media and tell us about it.