Saskatoon’s Lucas Floer makes Canada wheelchair basketball debut

It’s been hard for Saskatoon’s Lucas Floer to put into words what the last few weeks have been like.

From national team camps to a life-changing email, Floer has since boarded a plane and landed in Japan to make his debut against some of the most promising wheelchair basketball athletes in the world.

“Probably nervous just getting to play against all these good players,” Floer said. “Obviously, don’t want to play bad.”

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Floer will sport the maple leaf this week at the 2026 Kitakyushu Champions Cup as part of Canada’s men’s NextGen program. He is one of two players on the roster making their debut in Japan.

The 15-year-old will take part in a three-day tournament with Team Canada, playing games against the Netherlands and the host Japanese squad.

“It means a lot to represent Canada at this level, a very special opportunity,” Floer said.

“I was very excited when I saw the invitation in my email because I knew it led to lots of opportunities going to the NextGen camp. I was very excited to show my parents.”

Floer was born with proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD), which affected the growth of his left femur and at three years old, and led to the amputation at age three.

Despite growing up with a prosthetic below the knee, Floer said he has never felt different from other kids his age, and has been able to play sports like standing basketball and football.

“One of my femurs is probably four or five inches shorter than the other femur,” Floer said. “I’ve never really been affected playing sports. I’ve played other sports that weren’t wheelchair basketball, like regular basketball.”

Floer’s first foray into wheelchair basketball came five years after the amputation, when his mother Shannon saw a post on social media looking for kids to take part in an introductory program.

While it wasn’t Lucas’ cup of tea to start, he returned to the sport with a more competitive group when he was 12.

“I did one year of that and I didn’t really like it,” Floer said.

“Then someone saw me at a football game who was involved with it and they were like, ‘You should come back and try it again.’ So I did and I liked it a lot more the second time.”

In the three years since he began playing competitive wheelchair basketball, Floer has joined the Saskatchewan Sasquatches program and was named a tournament all-star at the 2026 Junior National Championship in Quebec City, Que.

He also made his international debut last year with Team Canada at the 2025 Youth Parapan American Games in Chile, which he believes has set the table for making the jump to the NextGen team.

“It meant a lot to represent Canada in Chile,” Floer said.

“It was my first time playing for Canada, so that was very exciting. I learned a lot while I was in Chile, just the skills and some concepts that we didn’t learn as much in Saskatchewan. I’m hoping to take those concepts that I learned into Japan.”

Floer has joined a growing group of wheelchair basketball talent to emerge from Saskatchewan, including two-time Paralympians Garrett Ostepchuk and Nik Goncin from Regina.

While Floer hasn’t trained or practised with the duo before, he has become well acquainted with Aberdeen’s Kyrell Sopotyk, a former Western Hockey League player who won a bronze medal at the 2026 Commonwealth Games for Canada in 3×3 men’s wheelchair basketball.

“He would come out to the YWCA in the summer sometimes and he would teach me some of the concepts that he learned from the senior men’s team,” Floer said. “It was a good chance to learn those concepts.”

Making Canada’s national senior men’s team is now on Floer’s radar, though the Grade 10 student admits it will likely take some seasoning before he can compete at that level.

One day, he hopes his success on the court will translate into representing Canada at the highest levels of para sport possible.

“I would hopefully like to make a Paralympic team,” Floer said. “I probably won’t be for a long time, but hopefully sometime down the road I could make one of those teams.”

Canada opens the tournament on Thursday at 5:30 a.m. against host Japan, before battling the Netherlands that same day at 9 p.m.