In 1973, the International Stoke Mandeville Games Federation established the first Sub-section for wheelchair basketball. At that time ISMGF was the world governing body for all wheelchair sports. In 1989, ISMGF accepted the name International Wheelchair Basketball Federation for its former sub-section. With this step wheelchair basketball began its journey for full independence and in 1993 IWBF was established as the world body for wheelchair basketball with full responsibility for development of the sport. Over the next five years IWBF membership grew in size and the federation configured itself into 4 geographical zones.
Zone Structure
IWBF studied several models before creating its current zone structure. Based on the number of National Organizations for Wheelchair Basketball with active programs at the national and international level it was decided that IWBF Americas and IWBF Europe could be the same as FIBA Americas and FIBA Europe. However, because of the limited number of countries with active programs in the rest of the world, IWBF chose to combine some regions to create better developmental and competitive opportunities within the zone. As a result, the last two zones of IWBF are IWBF Asia Oceania and IWBF Africa. As of 2003, IWBF has 76 NOWB actively participating in wheelchair basketball throughout the world with this number increasing each year.
Executive Council
IWBF is governed by an Executive Council that is elected at the World Congress every four years. Philip Craven who had served as Chairperson of the ISMGF wheelchair basketball Section since 1988 was elected in 1993 as the first President of IWBF. In 2001, Brendan Hancock was elected to the position of President of the International Paralympic Committee and retired as president of IWBF at the World Congress in 2002. Maureen Orchard was elected as only the second president of IWBF at that same World Congress in Kitakyushu, Japan in 2002.
Classification
In order to make the competitions fair, each player receives a point in regard their physical ability called class, from 1.0 which is the lowest class with the maximum physical disability to the 4.5 which is highest class with the lowest physical disability. The person who performs classification called classifier. Classifiers have Bronze, Silver and Gold badges according to their knowledge and experience. Recently the classification rules made changes and have only two levels, namely the national classifier, the zone classifier and the International Classifier. Don Perriman is the current President of Classification Commission, Kenneth McKay Gold Classifier, Gholamhossein Shahrabadi Gold Classier, Toufic Allouch (Lebanon
Wheelchair basketball national organizations have developed in a variety of ways. Most started out the same way as IWBF, as a sub-section of a national wheelchair sport organization. As IWBF matured so did many of its member organizations and now there are several models that IWBF embraces within its membership. In Mexico the wheelchair basketball organizations are a part of their National Paralympic Committee. Australia is part of the Australian Wheelchair Athletes Ltd., and others are under the umbrella of a National Disabled Federation such as Bahrain who are part of the Bahrain Disabled Sports Federation. In the Netherlands wheelchair basketball is fully integrated into the Nederlandse Basketball Bond and in Canada the Canadian Wheelchair Basketball Association is fully independent. In all cases where a member is part of a larger federation the IWBF only recognizes the part of that federation responsible for wheelchair basketball.
