A WHEELCHAIR basketball team are tired but proud after smashing the record for the longest wheelchair basketball session at the weekend.

The South West Scorpions played for a total of 27 hours and 32 minutes, breaking the record of 26 hours and three minutes held by the University of Omaha, Nebraska since September 2004.

The 24 participants, who divided into two equal teams, started at 10am on Saturday and continued playing overnight, finishing at around 1.30pm on Sunday.

Olympic torchbearer and 2016 Paralympic hopeful, Ben Fox, 16, of Westlea, who is one of the captains of the Scorpions, took part in the challenge at the Wise Campus of Filton College, Bristol.

After the cost of putting on the event, the group has so far raised about £3,000 in sponsorship.

They want to thank everyone for their support, including main sponsor Deloitte, as well as Sainsbury, Bookers, and the Swindon Advertiser .

Ben said: “We’re just so happy that we broke it.

“We wanted to go for 30 hours but we thought we would stop sooner because we were feeling so tired, and people were getting injured with dislocations.

“The worst bit was midnight to 4am.

“It’s just that everyone had been up at 7am the previous morning and we were really tired.

“And during the day we had a lot of support but obviously no one wanted to come out at 2am in the morning so it was quite quiet.

“We’re proud we’ve managed to achieve it.”

Ben’s mum, Carol Hearne, who is fundraising officer for the group, said: “It was amazing, they smashed the record.

“It was such an emotional moment, they were absolutely amazing.

“I just cannot believe they did it, to be honest.

“They stuck to their guns. I think at one point they had more blisters than they had scores on the board, they really suffered.

“They were so elated they had actually broken the record.

“So what we’ve got to do now is we’ve got to submit all our information and see if we can get it listed as an official Guinness World Record.

“We had to video it constantly.

“We had to have three clocks going. We had to have witnesses for every hour that we played.”

Ben was born with a catalogue of defects in his vital organs and no right leg due to an extremely rare condition called Vater Syndrome.

He is hoping to be part of the wheelchair basketball team at the Paralympics in 2016 in Rio, Brazil Ben appeared in the Coca-Cola Olympics billboard poster alongside Eliza Doolittle and the star sent him a video message to wish him luck for the weekend.

For more information or to donate, visit www.southwestwbc.com.