Wheelchair soccer comes to Missouri

From The Columbia Tribune in Missouri:

ASHLAND, Mo. — Aimee Wehmeier (pictured) wasn’t sure what to expect when she began playing soccer in her power wheelchair last summer.

“You kind of think, ‘Oh this will be a feel-good activity,’ ” Wehmeier said.

She soon learned better.

Yesterday at the Show-Me State Games, the 38-year-old Columbia native and her five teammates arrived at Southern Boone High School for more than a friendly.

“Go hard or go home,” the Columbia Driving Force’s players cried before taking the floor. And when goalie Stu Bailey stopped a breakaway, wedged the ball against his opponent’s chair and began to drive him up the floor, the game was officially on.

Bailey, a 61-year-old who lost feeling in the right side of his body after a stroke two years ago, soon had a few words for a visitor.

“What do you think about this now?” he said with a smile.

Power soccer, the first team sport designed specifically for power wheelchair users, debuted at the SMSG yesterday.

Two teams of four sped up and down the gym floor, blocking advances and trying to spin-kick a 13-inch ball between two orange cones.

For Columbia athletes like Bailey and Wehmeier, who has muscular dystrophy, and Greg Abbot, a 19-year-old with cerebral palsy, it’s opened a door few thought possible.

“It’s about having a chance to really compete,” Bailey said.

The sport, which requires only a power chair and a soccer guard attached the front, is not new. Developed first in France during the 1970s before making its way to the U.S. in 1988, it is the nation’s fastest-growing sport for power chair users. There is international competition — the Driving Force, which fell 3-2 yesterday, plan to visit Minnesota to learn from Team USA — and teams across two divisions span from Santa Barbara, Calif., to Canton, Mass.

Room for growth remains. None on the Driving Force had heard of it when Mark Ohrenberg, the youth and family services coordinator at Columbia’s Services for Independent Living, introduced the game last summer.

But what wasn’t to like? The sport is similar to soccer. Greg Moss, a senior at Missouri who began helping the team as part of a class project and never left, said the group works on “corner kicks, penalty kicks, give-and-gos, ball handling.”

Among the adapted rules are wider goals, 20-minute halves and a speed limit around 6 mph. What’s no different is the struggle for victory.

Most competitors do not use their everyday chair because of the sport’s collisions — Wehmeier beelined to Arkansas when she found a Quickie chair on eBay for $500.

Abbot still appeared to be smarting from the time an official warned him to tone down his aggressiveness.

“I got a yellow card because I was going too hard,” he said.

“He was spinning into people,” a teammate added.

More than just fun, Wehmeier said, power soccer “pretty quickly turns into a competitive, ‘I really want to win’ sport.”

For Bailey, it was just what he needed. After his stroke, he had trouble accepting life in a wheelchair. In high school, he ran track and wrestled. And he had been playing softball for years. Now, he thought, there was nothing.

“I was depressed,” he said. “I never really knew what there was to the disabled community.”

Then Bailey found power soccer — and he hopes more do, too. Missouri only has three teams. Wehmeier, director of the Services for Independent Living, said there are plans to add two more.

She also hopes for more competition in Columbia. Yesterday, she recovered a rebound in front of the goal, pushed the ball to her left and nailed it through the cones.

She’s good, but she’s not above fighting for her spot.

“We’ll see,” she said, laughing. “There are some good players coming up.”