The U.S. wheelchair rugby team gathered in a tunnel before every match at last week’s World Championship tournament in São Paulo, Brazil, and played what became the team’s unofficial anthem: “All the Small Things” by Blink-182.
They sang along. They waited for the “na na na” refrain — and banged their wheels in unison. Their opponents noticed.
“A couple teams, it shook them up a little bit,” co-captain Chuck Aoki said. “They didn’t look like they wanted to go play after that.”
On Sunday night, the Americans celebrated the program’s first world title since 2010. They feasted on Brazilian meat. They cried. They took endless photos.
They also sang “All the Small Things.”
It was not only the team song, but also its motto. Long ago, coach Joe Delagrave emphasized to the players that if they checked off the minute details — being punctual for meetings, taking care of nutrition, communicating — they would win the world title.
Delagrave leaned on that mindset in the minutes leading up to Sunday’s final against rival Australia, which the U.S. won 57-51 in a rematch of the last World Championship final in 2022.
WE DID IT https://t.co/bUxHu6jZ3d pic.twitter.com/DPd8EsZVmH
— Chuck Aoki (@Aoki5Chuck) August 25, 2026
“We talked about not letting the narratives that introspection can kind of give you — what this might mean should we win — and really focusing on us and the process,” Delagrave said. “Not on what this means for the history of our program, or getting back on top and avenging the losses of other gold-medal games, but more just about focusing on us and what the game plan was.”
Aoki, a 35-year-old who has spent nearly half his life on the national team, led the way in carrying that out on the court. But even Aoki, the first American to compete in four Paralympic wheelchair rugby tournaments, needed more demonstrative instructions.
"(Delagrave said) something along the lines of, ‘Take care of the expletive ball, and we’re going to get this,’” Aoki recalled.
The tournament MVP Aoki led the team in scoring in all eight matches, including a 50-49 semifinal victory over world No. 1 Japan, a rematch of the 2024 Paralympic final won by Japan.
Sunday’s championship game triumph over world No. 2 Australia was also sweet, given the Aussies beat the Americans in double overtime in the 2016 Paralympic final, which was also in Brazil.
“They played kind of a bully-ball style, and I mean that in a complimentary way,” Aoki said of this iteration of Australia, once again led by the intense Ryley Batt. “They were like, we’re just going to hit you over and over and over again, and you’re going to have to keep going through us. They say the best way to get a bully is to punch back. We really punched back in a way we’ve never done before.”
Batt, an admitted trash-talker, congratulated Aoki afterward, telling his counterpart that he earned it.
Marcello Zambrana
Coach Delagrave has his own unique perspective on Aoki. They played together on the last U.S. team to win a world title in 2010.
“You talk about the best players to ever play the game, he’s on top of my list and in anyone’s conversation, but I think his ability to make people believe around him, build them up into better players, which was certainly true in this gold-medal game with Sarah (Adam) and Alex (Pabon) and Lee (Fredette) playing incredible, and that’s not by accident,” Delagrave said. “Sometimes with talking about the greats of the game, in any sport, they’re great, but they might not always be the best leaders. And Chuck is one of one in that category.”
Aoki’s previous gold medal from the 2010 Worlds lies in a box that has gone unpacked since he moved into his Michigan home two years ago.
His four medals from his sport’s biggest stage -- the Paralympics -- are all silver or bronze.
While the golden goal for Los Angeles 2028 remains clear, Aoki described this championship as “cathartic.”
“Of course, I still want a Paralympic gold extremely badly,” he said. “This was an incredibly fulfilling and satisfying tournament because we had to go through everybody. We had to beat everybody. We put ourselves back on top of the world to say, no, we are the best.”
