(Radio Iowa) –  An Iowan who won gold medals at the Paralympics in 2016 and 2021 has been inducted into the National Wheelchair Basketball Hall of Fame.

Joshua Turek of Council Bluffs was born with a condition called spina bifada and has used a wheelchair since childhood. He played professional wheelchair basketball in Europe for 17 years and was a member of four Team USA Paralympic men’s basketball teams. “I dedicated my life to this sport. I love this sport. I will always be around it,” Turek said at the induction ceremony. “…I owe every single thing to this sport.”

Two of Turek’s siblings played what he calls “able-bodied basketball” and they are both retired pro players. Elisha, his sister, played on a professional team in Spain. “If it wasn’t for her, pushing me every day,” he said, “making sure I got to the gym lifting, I wouldn’t be where I was.”

Joshua Turek shoots during Team USA Wheelchair Basketball game at 2021 Paralympics. (Photo courtesy of Joshua Turek)

Turek’s brother John, who’s six foot nine, was a starter for the Nebraska Cornhuskers and played professional basketball in several European countries. “It was not easy being in a wheelchair trying to play any sort of one-on-one, but he pushed me every single day to try to get better than him and it inspired me,” Turek said. “It really did.”

Turek also credits his mom, who was raising five kids, with somehow finding a way to get him connected to the sport. “Wheelchair basketball when I was a kid gave me a purpose,” Turek said, “it gave me a friend group, it gave me self-esteem.”

Turek said without the sport, he never would have gone to college at Southwest Minnesota State University, where he scored over 4000 points as a member of the school’s wheelchair basketball tem.

Turek, who is 44 years old, works for a company that provides technology and mobility devices for people with disabilities. He was elected to the Iowa House in 2022.

The National Wheelchair Basketball Association was founded in 1949 and there are more than 130 teams in the U.S. today.