The world's biggest Vikings fan is going for gold at the Paralympics
The world's biggest Vikings fan is going for gold at the Paralympics
Minnesota native and wheelchair rugby star Chuck Aoki is aiming high in Paris
By Matthew Coller
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — If you can hug Kelly Clarkson, then you can hug me, Chuck.
Those were my first words to Chuck Aoki when we met in person for the first time after many years of following each other’s careers through the internet.
Aoki was a listener to 1500ESPN when I was first hired there to cover the Vikings in 2016 and he followed along when Purple Insider launched in 2020. I discovered right away that he is the type who could fill out the Vikings 53-man roster from the top of his head. I once asked him for his list of favorite Vikings of all time and he mentioned running back Matt Asiata. Yeah, he’s that level of Viking fan.
He wasn’t quite old enough for ‘98 to crush his soul but 41-donut certainly did the trick. He remembers shutting off the TV halfway through that brutal loss to the Giants and his dad urging him to not give up. He has not given up since.
Early on during my radio days I was aware that he was the listener who participated in the Paralympics. What I didn’t realize until the first Paralympics after I moved to Minnesota (2020 in Tokyo) is that Aoki is one of the most most prominent faces of the Paralympics. He was a flag bearer leading the United States along with swimmer Melissa Stockwell.
Carrying the flag in Tokyo was particularly special to Aoki. He made Kelly Clarkson cry on TV when he told her about his family’s Japanese heritage and how his grandparents had been in an internment camp during World War II. He could feel their pride when he was holding the flag. His grandfather joined the army upon his release from the camp.
I also didn’t realize until I saw him play that Aoki is a baller. I knew he was on the team, I didn’t know he was the Randy Moss of the team. He is the United States’ main scoring threat because his ability to maneuver his chair stands above nearly anyone in the world. His forearms look like they belong to Danielle Hunter.
You’ll see those forearms on TV leading up to the Paralympics because Aoki is everywhere. He is featured in montages that NBC runs of the Olympians and Paralympians with the classic John Williams score playing underneath. On Delta flights, part of the safety video included promoting that they were the airline of the Olympics. If you pay close attention you can see a flash of Aoki pushing forward.
I turned on Minnesota Public Radio and heard him doing an interview. I went to YouTube and saw him on Today Show. I noticed the Detroit News wrote a story about Aoki as the local man “aiming for elusive gold.”
It’s not a mystery why he’s so often the guy that’s front and center for the Paralympics. Aoki is warm and articulate. He understands that he has to pack a punch in a short period of time during these media stops so he has learned how get folks jacked about wheelchair rugby and explain his own disability in five minutes or less.
Aoki is also willing to do it. Not every athlete in the Paralympics feels the need to carry the torch for their sport. Not every athlete in the Paralympics wants to break down their disability over and over either. He’s OK with doing both.
At this point I’ve watched dozens of interviews and TV segments about Aoki and the Paralympics. They almost always go this way: He will explain wheelchair rugby as a hybrid of a few different sports. It’s like football because you roll over a goal line with the ball to score. It’s like basketball because ball movement is a big deal and there’s a score clock. It’s like hockey because it’s a physical game and you can go to the penalty box.
Aoki tells interviewers about the documentary Murderball and how he became inspired to play wheelchair rugby after seeing it. He often shares the story of trying the game after years of playing wheelchair basketball by going to Courage Kenny Sports and Recreation in Minneapolis and getting smashed around by the experienced players and loving every minute of it.
Because he’s from Minnesota and doesn’t like to brag, Aoki usually doesn’t mention that he knew on the first day playing wheelchair rugby that he was really good because of his unique gift for navigating his chair with precision, speed and power. When he revealed to me that he had told his dad after his first practice that he knew he could be great against high level talent, he lowered his voice as if he was sharing a deep secret.
“What I don’t tell as often about that practice is, yes I got lit up because I didn’t know what I was doing… I was running circles around people,” Aoki told me. “I was significantly faster. I had the most function but I was significantly faster than just about everybody and the game came to me pretty quickly. Where to go on the floor, what to do, what to understand. My dad was like, ‘how was it?’ And I was like, ‘awesome,’ but I also said, ‘I feel like I’m pretty good at this. I feel like I’ve got something here.’”
Aoki, who works for the University of Michigan and has a master’s degree in public policy and Ph. D in international relations from University of Denver, has a way in these interviews of melting away any discomfort over asking how he ended up in the chair.
He was born with a rare disease called hereditary sensory autonomic neuropathy that robbed him of any feeling below the elbow or knee. The human body uses pain as a warning but Aoki’s limbs don’t get the memo. As a kid he ended up injuring himself constantly, resulting in broken bones and infections that caused him to lose parts of his fingers. He can walk a little but has to be careful. He could step on hot coals and not realize it.
If he gets extended TV or radio time, Aoki will explain that the levels of disability is part of the story of the Paralympics. Teams are built using a point system based on physical restrictions. He has a high rating of 3.0 (out of 3.5). Coaches have to choose whether to put more players in the middle of the point system on the floor or have only a few higher point players who have more mobility like Aoki mixed with lower point players.
When Aoki lays it all out to Kelly Clarkson or MPR, it sounds like a fascinating sport and a damn good time.
Usually the TV interviews and radio segments stop there. But there’s a lot more to Aoki’s story than his typical spiel. There’s a dude who has fought his whole career for gold, only to come just short with two silver medals and a bronze. There’s a sport fighting to be seen as top-level competitors going to battle rather than just being an inspiration.
I wanted to understand all of it. Where the Paralympics stands in terms of getting more viewership and analysis, what the gold medal would mean to Aoki and where the Vikings fit into his life.
So I went to Ann Arbor in July to find out. We chatted about wheelchair rugby, football and life for 90 minutes.
With the beginning of the Paralympics this week and Aoki playing in the first preliminary round matchup against Canada on Thursday, here are the best parts of our conversation…
MATTHEW COLLER: How are the nerves right now, Chuck? You have had a long time to prepare for another shot at gold. It has to be tough to wait that long to get another shot.
CHUCK AOKI: What makes it so special is that you only get it once every four years. I think about this a lot following professional sports. In every other professional sport you get a shot the next year. When the Timberwolves lost in the conference finals, it still sucks but the next year you can say, ‘I’ll be better, I’ll be stronger, I’ll be faster.’ In our world every four years you don’t know what’s going to happen. Last time from 2016 to 2020 it was like, ‘OK I’ll be there in four years,’ and then there was a global pandemic. A lot can happen in four years that can completely change the way the world looks.
COLLER: I’ve been seeing you everywhere, which feels like a really good thing for the Paralympics. I had never seen wheelchair rugby before you told me to watch Murderball and then when I watched you in Tokyo, I couldn’t wait to see more. I want to hear some talk about strategies and team construction but it feels like in your interviews you are still pretty limited to explaining the most basic aspects of the game.
AOKI: That’s part of the infancy of Paralympic sport within the media ecosphere. They are just learning about this thing’s existence and it’s hard to immediately pivot and say, ‘now break down and analyze it.’ We already have that developed ecosystem for most professional sports these days so even your layman can spend 10 minutes talking about a quarterback matchup at a very high level. Paralympic sports it’s more like, ‘tell us about this, tell us about this thing you got going on.’ I would love to talk more about the tactics but part of that challenge is that people have to know what it is that they are diving into before they can dive into it. It’s a tricky balance.
What I have seen that has been nice is that so much media now has moved on from, ‘wow what an amazing inspiration you are to be doing these things, great job, pat on the back.’ Now it’s, ‘what is it that you do? Oh, that’s exciting. Team USA, let’s go. Represent.’ The next step to take is, ‘great, the Paralympics is awesome, here we go, Team USA plays Germany, Canada and Japan and let’s break those matchups down.’
I think a lot about how adapted sports and Paralympic sports is maybe where women’s sports was a decade-and-a-half ago. People knew it was there and maybe heard about it but people maybe only knew who Sheryl Swoops was from Team USA and Teresa Weatherspoon and Lisa Leslie but most didn’t really know much more. We’ll get there.
COLLER: This Paralympics is big for the sport though, right? In 2020 Peacock wasn’t around, social media wasn’t what it is now. I saw a story about how the Paralympic Tik Tok is blowing up leading into the games. It feels like this is a moment for Paralympians to tell their stories.
AOKI: When I think about the growth I’ve seen and the growth in awareness, the growth of media coverage and people seeing Paralympics on TV — I was in a restaurant the other day and I looked over and there I was in an ad. I couldn’t fathom that 12 years ago. That was unbelievable. I feel a sense of satisfaction in what we’ve done as Team USA and the Paralympic movement, we have grown immensely. I feel satisfaction and pride in that. On a personal level I feel unsatisfied because I still need to bring him a gold medal.
COLLER: When you talk about being viewed as an inspiration, I’m interested in what you think about the balance between telling the stories of how Paralympic athletes acquired their disabilities along with their talents and skillsets. There are some unbelievable stories here. The things that the athletes overcame, including yourself, is unlike any other sport.
AOKI: The way I have come to approach it is: If you want to tell the story of Chuck Aoki, who grew up with a rare disability and was injured all the time growing up and didn’t know if he could play sports anymore and then found sports he could play and overcame obstacles to make it to the pinnacle to sport — if that story is inspiring to somebody and motivates them then that’s pretty good. I have a guy on the team who was in the army and crashed a motorcycle and he got cut maybe like seven or eight times and made it. That’s incredible. The fact we are disabled is part of what happened but then they worked unbelievably hard at their craft like any other athlete. It’s fine for it to be part of the story but it shortchanges some people.
It’s important to talk about the Paralympics differently because everyone has gone through difficult things and then on top of that made it to an elite level in their sport. That journey is incredible. The key is that it’s not inspiration just by existing. That’s where it’s a problem. This drives me nuts: People will have regional or national events and the media will cover it but they won’t say who won. They don’t tell you who won the tournament. That’s mind blowing for me.
COLLER: So let’s talk about Paris. You won bronze in London 2012, silver in Rio de Janeiro and silver in Tokyo. What would gold mean to you?
AOKI: The gold medal would mean an immense amount. It would be that piece that’s missing in my collection of awards and trophies and medals that I’ve won. But I try not to hyper fixate on the need for a gold because I don’t think that’s particularly healthy. I think I need to focus on being the best athlete I can be and if we execute we will get the results we want. If you become obsessive about the gold it can distract you. What I’ve realized about why it would mean so much is that every single player on our team and every staff member we have, every one of us has sacrificed an immense amount to get to this point and it would be worth it.
COLLER: Let’s get into the sport here. What’s the United States’ playing style? What type of team are you?
AOKI: We run a balanced lineup, we want to spread the ball around and we’re going to throw passes on the money up and down the court. For us it’s about executing our spacing. In this sport you score about 90% of the time if you’re a good team so you can’t have turnovers. Because scoring happens a ton — it’s one point at a time and scores are usually in the mid-50s — it’s all about maintaining a high level of execution on offense and being relentlessly aggressive on defense. Our sport rewards taking chances on defense, trying to steal the ball, trying to knock people out of bounds and playing a physical aggressive style.
COLLER: Since we aren’t at the point where we have oddsmakers, give me the breakdown. You came up short by just five points in the gold medal game against Great Britain in 2020. Are they the biggest challenger?
AOKI: Eight teams go to the Paralympics, seven of them have a chance to finish on the podium. Australia is ranked No. 1, we’re No. 2. The No. 3 team in the world is in our pool, that’s Japan. They are very talented. They rotate high-point players unlike any other team. They have three of them and they play two at a time so one is always resting, that’s unique and challenging.
Canada plays a system similar to us with one dominant player that they build everything around. Since they play similarly, we know how to play them but they understand how to play us. They are scrappy.
Australia has probably the best player in the world Riley Batt so we know that the path to winning a gold medal will go through them. Great Britain has maybe the fastest guy in the world, when he turns it on he flies by you.
These teams are all good. Denmark is ranked seventh but they beat Australia in the last Paralympics. Parity is great for the sport but it makes my life more difficult.
COLLER: I want to get into the Vikings part of your life. You aren’t just a fan, you are in like the 99th percentile of knowledgeable Vikings fans. Where did that passion come from?
AOKI: I grew up watching sports with my dad. He is a fanatical sports fan. He was from Portland but when he moved to Minnesota around 1990 and those teams became his teams. It became a classic father-son thing to watch sports together. I’ve always been a very loyal and passionate person. When I find something I like then it’s my thing.
Throughout my life I’ve lived in quite a few places. Since growing up in Minnesota, I’ve lived in Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas and Michigan now but Minnesota is home. When people ask where I’m from, it’s Minnesota. I love Minnesota. I think being away has intensified my passion. It’s my tie to home. It’s the constant thing about home, there will always be the Vikings.
COLLER: You are under selling your knowledge of this team. I’ll get messages from you asking about the UDFA linebacker they signed in May or something crazy like that.
AOKI: When I find something that I’m passionate about I’m going to dive into it deeply. Because I come from the sports world, I love thinking about how we evaluate players. I like the analytical part, looking at PFF grades and their metric-based system and having spent so much time in high-level sports, I’ve seen people on the fringes and you never know who’s going to be that Adam Thielen. He was an undrafted kid out of Mankato. I find that fascinating. Every one of those guys has a story.
And I think about how every one of these guys that doesn’t make it like a Lucky Jackson was really, really good at some point to even have a chance to play in the NFL and I’m always interested in why some of those guys make it and some don’t make it. Trying to figure out which players will be diamonds in the rough, that’s exciting. A lot of times the decisions at the bottom of the roster are more interesting to me.
How about Ivan Pace Jr.? How does that decision get made to sign this tiny linebacker and then he becomes a starter. That’s incredible. How many players are out there like him that don’t get that chance?
COLLER: Do you have a favorite Vikings moment that sticks with you?
AOKI: When I realized how deep of a fan that I really am was in 2009. I was in Arizona and a friend of mine from Minnesota found a bar that showed all the games. It was the game against the 49ers and Favre chucks an absolute bomb of a pass and Greg Lewis catches it and I started yelling in the restaurant. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I’ve never been that type of person. I would never see myself as someone that cheers in a restaurant like that but I was that excited. Greg Lewis doesn’t get enough credit for that catch, by the way.
COLLER: So how are you feeling about the 2024 Vikings?
AOKI: I am beyond excited to see what Sam Darnold can do this year. I think so much of sports is about the situation you are placed into. If you are doing track, you either run the fastest or not but in teams sports there are so many people with talent and, what happens when they are put in the right situation? If Nick Foles can win a Super Bowl, anything is possible.
I’m excited for a new start. They have great weapons. The defense is going to be really improved. I’m more excited about the direction of the franchise than I’ve been in a while.
COLLER: It’s an honor to have you as a reader/listener, all the best in Paris, my friend.
AOKI: Thank you. It’s always an honor to be representing the USA, I never take that for granted. SKOL Vikings.