How Joe Delagrave and Team USA Wheelchair Rugby Became World Champions

Meet Joe Delagrave

Before guiding Team USA to the top of the international podium, Joe Delagrave was a dedicated three-sport athlete who went on to play Division II college football at Winona State University. However, on July 10th, 2004, a boating trip turned life-altering when an accident left him paralyzed at just 19 years old. Facing the daunting reality of navigating life in a wheelchair, Delagrave channeled his relentless competitive drive into adaptive sports.

That pursuit led him to wheelchair rugby, where he became one of the dominant figures in international competition. Over a 13-year playing career with Team USA, including eight years serving as team captain, he earned two Paralympic medals (Bronze in London 2012 and Silver in Tokyo 2020) alongside multiple World Championship medals.

Off the court, Delagrave holds a Master’s degree in professional counseling, works as a dynamic motivational keynote speaker, centers his philosophy around purpose, resilience and growth. 

This philosophy bleeds into his coaching, blending high-level tactical insight with a strong focus on leadership and team culture.

Now in his fifth season as Head Coach of USA Wheelchair Rugby, Delagrave - alongside Coach Eric Newby, Meagan Rowe (high performance manager) and Callie Martin (live analysis) - has transformed how the squad prepares for major international competitions. 

We sat down with Coach Delagrave shortly after their famous victory in the World Championships to talk about all things wheelchair rugby and video analysis.

So, without further ado, let’s hand it over to the man himself…

Q: Winning gold against Australia 57-51 was the end of a long build-up of preparation and competition. Looking back, what role did video analysis play across that campaign, from qualification through to the final?

Joe Delagrave: We utilized Nacsport for our build-up to Worlds. Our preparation heading in was paramount to our success. 

During the tournament, our use of Nacsport during games and after helped us tremendously in the result. 

We utilized the in-game coaching app to help players see the court from a different perspective and helped us as coaches make the necessary adjustments at halftime.

We spent a lot of time working with individual athletes, working with dedicated lines to review game film and sharpen our shared understanding of various game-based scenarios.

This was done using Nacsport Hub and sharing clips for athletes and lines to review, creating tasks for them to complete and working with the group remotely in between training camps and competitions.

The ability to share clips and analysis remotely and empower the athletes to review film in their own time helped contribute towards the type of learning environment we have in tournament-based sports.

Q: As an international squad, you operate with athletes spread across the country between training camps and tournaments. How is your analysis programme structured to work remotely?

Joe Delagrave: When we aren’t together, which unfortunately is a lot, we use Nacsport for homework assignments and in the prep of lines we were working on heading into Worlds.

The team works remotely 90% of the time due to this being a tournament and international-based sport.

Our players usually play for their own respective domestic teams, but come together for camps, which is a period of time where they can review video and work in person. 

To maintain team connection and task execution when apart, the coaching team and I use Nacsport Hub to communicate directly with the team, create assignments and track player progress directly.

Most of their learning environment is remote, so using Hub for video access is a crucial part of our analysis and video workflows.

Q: Talk us through your technical setup. What hardware, cameras and capture devices are you working with to bring court footage to the athletes?

Joe Delagrave: To stream and review live match footage, Team USA captures video using AverMedia hardware combined with AnalysisPro’s wireless devices to feed video directly to Nacsport Live.

On the touchline, coaches employ two iPads to interact with Nacsport Live and share immediate visual feedback with players during matches.

Being able to make adjustments in real time as the game unfolds was a crucial piece of our live analysis workflow. We want to give athletes information that can help affect a change in the game and using video in real time was an extremley powerful tool for us

Q: Wheelchair rugby is a tactically complex sport. Which Nacsport tools do you lean on most to break the game down into teachable components?

Joe Delagrave: We’ve found that Nacsport Hub is an excellent tool for teaching and learning.

What we usually do here is set up tasks for the players on the platform. This means that players can log into Hub in order to review training footage, make quick clips and build presentations or lists of clips. 

These tasks then get sent to the Team Channel in the form of tasks which are designed to generate conversation with the team.

Completed tasks and subsequent feedback are then taken to our meetings, which are held with each specific line (a group of four players or more who would be on the court at the same time).

So, as you can see, this has been extremely for quickly getting information in front of players and, also, for scouting opponents.

Q: What is the coaching and performance philosophy behind your analysis programme and what does video analysis unlock that you couldn't get from manual observation and the scoreboard alone?

Joe Delagrave: Simply put, Nacsport allows us to take an objective perspective from our own team and opponents to put together the best game plan.

We guide the squad according to a core game model and tactical philosophy, using objective video data to validate on-court decisions.

We want our use of film to help the players see the game more clearly and help them make informed decisions or spot tendencies in our opponents that we have prepped for.

Q: When preparing for a specific opponent, how do you use analysis to scout them and shape your game plan? Did anything in your prep for the final give you an edge?

Joe Delagrave: Most of the preparation work for our opponents happened before the actual tournament.

This meant that, when we were at the tournament, we simply scouted their most recent performances to make sure what we previewed and identified pre-competition was still relevant.

The basic approach is that we take a look at their offensive systems and tactics and how they are attacking us on defense.

We looked at key areas and built our tactical plan around those. We also did a lot of individual scouting in order to ensure our players had a good awareness of our opponents strengths and weaknesses.

We felt like we had a good plan before our first game and stayed true to that throughout the tournament and into the final.

Q: Managing a squad with varying levels of experience requires tailored communication. How do you adapt insights for individual athletes versus lineup combinations?

Joe Delagrave: It’s a unique blend, for sure. We focus on the individual earlier in the quad or season, then switch to line focus later. We utilize foundational systems for offense and defense, so it’s dependent on the individual how much we can stack on top of that.

Heading into the Worlds, it was important to make sure we played 4v4 as opposed to 1v1 on both sides of the ball.

This is basically about shared alignment. We wanted to ensure that all the players in the same line were on the same page and making team-based decisions according to the game model and principles.

In fact, a lot of our video-based work revolved around this concept.

Q: How do you share these insights with athletes and how does that process shift during competition?

Joe Delagrave: We tend to use a mix of presentations, individual clips and online sharing. 

But we get very specific in line meetings during the preparation phase.

Individual clips work early in the season, but when prepping for big tournaments like the World Championship, it’s important to present those to the whole line to make sure they are all aligned.

Q: How have you found the software to work with day-to-day and how does analysis fit into your long-term plans, such as prepping for LA28?

Joe Delagrave: We are continuing to learn and grow in terms of how much of the software we are utilizing. The scouting tags, in-game use and presentations all play a part in achieving our goals.

We’re currently trying to make our workflow as efficient as possible. For example, we are currently developing systems for live analysis, basically tagging and streaming in real-time which will help us adjust tactics during an actual game.

At the same time, we are also working on our post-match processes. The auto lists feature in Nacsport allows us to automatically create a presentation of key moments from the game that are immediately available for our athletes to review after the final whistle.

We are excited to continue building our knowledge base with Nacsport heading into LA28, where we know everyone in the world will be vying for a spot on the podium. 

We are confident Nacsport will once again help us to reach the top.

Conclusion

We’d like to thank Joe for taking time out of his busy schedule to speak to us. 

It has been a pleasure to support him and the team towards gold in the World Championships and we look forward to continuing this relationship in the 2028 Paralympic Games and beyond.

If you have any questions for Joe regarding his wheelchair rugby coaching philosophy or his use of video analysis, please feel free to get in touch with us and we’ll happily forward your enquiries to him.

As always, if you have any questions about Nacsport or would like to get a free 30-day trial of the software, visit our website or any of our social media channels.

Until then…

Thanks for reading.