Oklahoma City opens soccer leagues for kids with disabilities

From The Oklahoman:

Bridget Pendergraft loves watching her son play soccer. Matthew is almost 5, and this is his first time to play organized sports. His league is perfect for him.

"The coach would be able to understand. The parents would be able to understand,” she said. "Nobody's going to care if my kid's running around in a Batman cape.”

Matthew has Asperger's syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum. He's one of more than 20 children playing in the Kickstart Soccer League, which meets in northwest Oklahoma City.

Kickstart is designed for children with autism. It's one of two new special-needs soccer leagues in the metro. The other is the Spirit League in Yukon.

Pendergraft, who lives in Oklahoma City, found Kickstart on Facebook. The league has been wonderful for Matthew, she said. He loves to put on his gear and play.

But he does face challenges, she said. If too many kids are going for the ball at once, Matthew tends to hang back to avoid the chaos. Pendergraft and her husband convinced him to keep playing. "Your team needs you,” they said. "Let's get back out there on the field.”

Pendergraft said she suspected her son was wired differently since his birth. He would line up toys. He couldn't talk until age 2, but he could count to 300 by age 3. He would pace and count whenever he felt anxious. Last year he was diagnosed.

"To me, it's not a hindrance,” she said. "It's not a jail sentence. They may be wired a little differently but ... they just see things differently.”

Parents of children like Matthew often face criticism from parents of typical children, Pendergraft said. But in the Kickstart league, everyone from the coaches to the volunteers knows that meltdowns and bad days aren't necessarily caused by bad parenting or bad behavior.

"Everybody knows what's going on and everybody's very accepting,” she said. "There's no pressure. We all understand. It's really nice.”

The parents, volunteers and coaches in the Spirit League in Yukon also help players despite their challenges, said Jason Beal, the city's special programs manager.

The Spirit League added a special-needs soccer program this fall, in addition to spring bowling and summer baseball programs. Players come from throughout the metro for the new soccer league, Beal said. For baseball, they come from as far away as Ponca City.

The Spirit League program is designed for children and adults with mental or physical challenges, he said.

The players practice their skills in the Jackie Cooper Gym.

They use a large, plush ball so players who use wheelchairs or walkers can participate.

Volunteers partner with them and play side-by-side.

"We're not so much going to be focused on rules,” he said. "It's just really going to be safety and fun.”

But the league is about more than physical skills, Beal said.

"It gives them a sense of normalcy,” he said. "They're human, and they want to go out there and have fun, too.”