Fredericton’s Austin MacLellan set to make wheelchair rugby history

Fredericton’s Austin MacLellan set to make wheelchair rugby history

From a local wheelchair rugby team to the world stage, Austin MacLellan is making New Brunswick history.

Fredericton’s Austin MacLellan is making history this week as New Brunswick’s first athlete to represent Canada at the world wheelchair rugby championships.

For MacLellan, the journey to the international stage started with an invitation to try a sport he had never played.

He was playing wheelchair basketball in 2021, when the local wheelchair rugby team was short of players.

“They were like, Hey, would you like to come out and participate?” MacLellan recalled. “And I was like, sure, like give me a chair, give me a set of gloves.”

He ended up coming back and has climbed to the top of his game in just five years playing the full-contact sport.

It’s an aggressive game that has athletes blocking and slamming into each other, often referred to as high-speed bumper cars, with its original name being "murderball."

The world championships run until Sunday in São Paulo, Brazil.

Sally Chamberlain, executive director of Parasport New Brunswick, said MacLellan’s selection for the Canadian team is a significant moment for the province.

“It’s monumental for us,” Chamberlain said. “It’s the first time ever anybody has made that team.”

Chamberlain said MacLellan’s achievement shows athletes in smaller communities can reach the highest levels of their sport.

MacLellan was named to Canada’s senior national team in 2025 and made his international debut that year. In May, he was named the Division 1 Garett Hickling most valuable player at the Canadian wheelchair rugby national championships, where New Brunswick finished fourth.

Fredericton athlete set to make wheelchair rugby history

Now, he is putting on the Team Canada jersey at his first world championships.

“It’s an absolute honour,” MacLellan said. “It’s still the same emotions of having just an immense, immense sense of pride of where you come from.”

He said he still gets “butterflies” every time he puts on the jersey.

MacLellan credits much of his development to the wheelchair rugby community in New Brunswick.

One of his early mentors was Hal Merrill, a pioneer of wheelchair rugby in the province, who died last year.

“Hal was very instrumental to our team and to myself as a human being,” MacLellan said. He remembers Merrill as someone who could understand the challenges athletes were facing both on and off the court.

“He always had a really good answer for me that I constantly reflect back to,” MacLellan said.

Chamberlain said mentorship is a defining part of the local wheelchair rugby community.

“When you start fresh and someone just takes you under their wing, which is such a wheelchair rugby community thing to do,” she said.

She said athletes learn not only the technical aspects of the sport but also life skills and confidence from their teammates.

And now, she said, MacLellan is beginning to give that support back.

After training and competing with the national team, Chamberlain said, MacLellan always returns to New Brunswick and shares what he has learned with local players and coaches.

“He’s already paying it forward,” she said.

MacLellan said his goal at the world championships is to work hard, have fun and trust the training that took him there.

Because it is his first world championship, he said he wants to learn from experienced players from around the world and continue developing his own game.

Canada, ranked sixth in the world, was to open the tournament against second-ranked Australia on Monday. The team will also face Brazil, the United States, the Netherlands and New Zealand in pool play.

For MacLellan, the opportunity is bigger than his own career.

“I hope that young athletes, when they see me, that I hope they push their bar a little bit further and enjoy their own journey of becoming an athlete,” he said.

He remembers his own first practice as a leap of faith and hopes other athletes will take the same chance.

“If anybody is on the fence of whether they should try parasports, I think they should definitely go ahead and do that,” he said.

Polina Kozlova is a journalist based in Fredericton. You can contact her with story ideas at polina.kozlova@cbc.ca .