Like so many who come to the sport unexpectedly, and relatively late, Juan Jasso is an evangelist. His latest role, in post since last November, is as the USARL director of wheelchair and rugby league development, from his base in Columbia, South Carolina.

His brief is to grow, sustain and advance the sport in the USA, oversee the implementation of a domestic Wheelchair competition, and develop rugby league in all its forms, increasing participation, matches and volunteers in the process.

“The initial spark is that I assisted current wheelchair head coach Andy Lucas with the Carolina 9s he ran in 2019.

“After that we kept in touch, and one day he called me up and said he’d got the bid for the wheelchair and asked if I’d like to be general manger.

“I was humbled and taken back by it but I love the sport, regardless of which variation it is, and wanted to help so said yes.”

Born in Louisiana and growing up in Texas, Jasso’s father was in the military and when he left school he followed in the same career path, as a signals intelligence analyst, and aged 19, in 1998, was stationed in England.

“I was introduced to rugby union and then in 2009 went to university at Leeds Met, someone told me I should try out for the league team and I instantly fell in love with it and knew that was the game for me,” he admits.

“I started coaching under Paul Fletcher, played and went out socially with Alex Walmsley and Jimmy Keinhorst and never looked back.”

Since then he’s coached at Red Bull New York, been a volunteer at York City Knights, a scholarship coach with London Broncos, head coach and chair of Eastbourne Exiles, been a sport’s lecturer at Manchester College and Calderdale College – where he coached the rugby league team – the inaugural coach of Latin Heat and a strength and conditioning coach with the Huddersfield Giants community trust; some league CV. 

Now his attention has turned to wheelchair in his native country and, four months down the line, the progress has been astonishing. 

“Right now we’re still in a growth and development stage, getting the word out about the game” he says.

“There is a huge amount of interest. When you tell people its not like the quad rugby or murderball and anybody can play, including able-bodied, they find that fascinating.

“Some of the trials and open days we’ve had have seen parents and kids playing alongside each other. We’ve probably had about 50 players come down to our various combines and are still constantly looking at players.

“The last one, a couple of weeks ago, we had four able bodied participants, two male and female, and then nine adaptive athletes and they were hooked, the word is getting out. 

“There are a lot of disability organisations and veteran’s organisations that I have already reached out to who are very interested, everything’s been extremely positive, we’ve not had one knock back so far.

“The fuse has been lit, we don’t know how long it is, but it’s going to explode.”

Jasso is also looking for friends in the right places and to deliberately keep some of his powder dry for maximum impact. 

“We’ve had various Paralympians come out and try the sport and they are going, ‘wow, this could the biggest adaptive sport in America’,” he confirms proudly.

“They’ve told us who we need to speak to, so we’re taking notes the entire time. Everyone on the administration side is able bodied so we don’t have that knowledge and it’s great that they want to work with us and be on the leadership committee.”

All that will be given a greater boost with the setting up of a domestic competition – three of the initially planned four teams have been announced – and to be competing in a World Cup in the autumn, where they are pooled with favourites France, Scotland and Wales.

“We won’t announce our final squad until the deadline date although we are adding names to our revamped website,” Jasso advises.

“We’re hoping to announce a warm up game here in the US in the next few weeks which will be huge.  

“Domestically, because the country is so vast, we’re concentrating on a three-hour radius from here in South Carolina, which is the home of the special Olympics, and make is similar to an NFL style with East and West conferences.

“We’ve had two of our athletes, who once they found out that we were putting together a national team and were in the World Cup, literally packed up all their belongings into a truck and drove from South Dakota, found a job and live here for the opportunity to be a part of that.

“We’ve got another who, for the next combine we have, is flying in from Idaho and he’s secured his own funding to do that - it’s literally life-changing events for them, amazing commitment and dedication and they don’t really know the sport.”

So what can audiences at the World Cup expect when they watch the USA at the Institute of Sport in Sheffield?

“We’ve got high expectations,” says Jasso. “We want to push the envelope as much as we can because we believe we have the athletes.

“We may not have the skill sets at the moment, that’s going to take some time, but we’re happy with where we’re currently at.

“I’ve been to the Celtic Cup and was at the England v France game at Medway last November and our goal is to try and compete with those top nations on a physical standpoint, and we think we can hold our own.

“Our goal is to try and get out of the group stages which as an unranked team in their first tournament is a tough ask but something we think is do-able, we also believe we can qualify for the 2025 World Cup, so we’re really excited.”

This article is reproduced with the kind permission of Forty20 Magazine and originally appeared in Issue 131 of that publication.