Mark Zupan, captain of the U.S. Quadriplegic Rugby Team and star of the critically acclaimed documentary Murderball, will visit Hamilton College for a lecture and a question and answer session on Monday, Oct. 16, at 8 p.m., in the Fillius Events Barn. The event, sponsored by the Dean of Student's Office, The President's Office and the Campus Activities Board, is free and open to the public. This is a rescheduling of a lecture that was to be held in April.
Zupan, now a civil engineer in Austin, has become one of the premiere quad rugby players in the U.S. In 2002 he was voted Quad Rugby Player of the Year, and in 2004 he was a starter for Team USA at the Paralympics in Athens, Greece, where he led the team to a Bronze medal. Zupan has captured four Most Valuable Player awards at tournaments held around the country and was just recently named U.S. Quad Rugby Associations Athlete of the Year.
He continues to compete and train, preparing for the 2008 summer Olympic games in Beijing.
Zupan was the featured subject of a documentary titled Murderball (July 2005). This film, winner of the best documentary at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, treks the trials and tribulations of the U.S. Quad Rugby Team as they prepare for the 2004 Paralympic Games of Athens. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary this year. It will be screened at Hamilton on Oct. 13 at 10 p.m, Oct. 14 at 8 p.m. and Oct 15 at 7 p.m., all in KJ Aud.
According to Zupan's Web site, "The sport of Murderball (aka Quad Rugby) combines the finesse of soccer with the bone-jarring collisions of a demolition derby. The athletes use custom wheelchairs and careen around the court with reckless abandon, like a rock-em-sock-em NHL on wheels. They smash. They spill. They swear. They score. During the process, they also unwittingly seek and destroy stereotypes about the physically handicapped."
