Brigitte Bowers: Soccer program offers a new kind of challenge for these kids

Coach Manuel Mello’s daughter Isabella wasn’t expected to survive when she was born premature seven years ago.

Conceived only 23 weeks before her birth, Isabella came into the world weighing 1 pound, 4 ounces. She spent three months in the Intensive Care Unit at Valley Children’s Hospital.

The day I meet her, though, she is sitting in her wheelchair like a driver at a demolition derby, pursuing a giant soccer ball at breakneck speed.

“She’s got Portuguese blood,” her dad says. “She’s strong, a survivor.”

And then, later, after we watch the TOPSoccer (The Outreach Program for Soccer) game for a while, Coach Manuel adds, “Girls are tough. They can take more pain.”

Indeed, there is no doubt that these kids are tougher than one might originally give them credit for. They are all in wheelchairs, all pushed by buddies – moms, dads, siblings, friends – and all engaged in a rousing game of soccer on a converted outdoor basketball court at McSwain School.

One father gets his kid up on two wheels on a turn, then tears down the soccer field after the ball. Another father follows them, and at one point it is difficult to determine who is having more fun, the fathers or the kids.

It’s May 23, and today is the last game of a four-game season. In the afternoon, kids and relatives will gather under shade trees for awards and a barbeque. For the past four weeks, they have practiced on Thursdays to ready themselves for the weekend games.

Ida and Delcio Gois, who have run the recreational soccer program for the McSwain League for the past 12 years, organized this year’s TOPSoccer program and ran it with volunteer help from Delcio’s McSwain League soccer players.

It is the first attempt at TOPSoccer in the county that they know of, though there is another TOPSoccer program nearby in Turlock.

Nationally, TOPSoccer, which is sponsored by US Youth Soccer, has been around since 1991. Its goal is to focus on participation and development, and the games are therefore grouped by ability instead of age.

The McSwain TOPSoccer program has 35 team members and a rotating group of about 100 volunteer buddies. It’s an auspicious start for a first-year program, and Ida hopes to have at least six games next year.

Some of the players at McSwain today have cerebral palsy, some are autistic, and some have other intellectual and physical challenges. There is a way for all of them to play soccer.

I overhear a grandmother say, “I think they cheer more for these games than at the others,” and I have to agree.

“Our team is winning!” shouts one boy after a girl on his team pushes the oversized ball into the goal, but none of the adults here care much about who scores.

The game is split into four quarters of seven and seven minutes in the first half and six and six in the second. At half-time, a girl named Carson Briggs wheels herself onto the field and practices moving the soccer ball to the net. I talk to Manuel a while longer. He tells me that he hopes for more participants and games next year.

I wander over to the grass field, where another game is about to start.

This one is for kids who can move independently. They are buddied up with players from Coach Gois’s McSwain League. On the way to the sidelines, I see Joe and Anthony Silveira, two kids I know from a junior sailing program my husband teaches. They’re getting ready to buddy up with some TOP players.

I ask them what they do, exactly, out there on the field.

“We tell them where to kick the ball,” Joe says.

“We encourage them. They don’t do so well with disappointment,” Anthony says. “Today, Coach wants me to stay with Jesus.”

Then they take off, and on the grass field the kids begin running, a horde of soccer players chasing a ball to the goal.

I speak to Joann Robinson, a mother whose adopted 9-year-old twins, Nathaniel and Matthew, are autistic. “They tore it up today,” she tells me. “They’re doing great. Next year they’re going to be making some goals.”

She points them out. They have finished their game and are playing on the swings and monkey bars with other team members who are waiting for the big noontime ceremony.

I observe a little more of the game. Parents sit in their lawn chairs and shout encouragement, relaxed and clearly happy to see their kids having so much fun.

Some of those parents have told me that TOPSoccer has given their kids an opportunity to do something they have wanted to do for a long time. Others tell me it’s been good simply because their child feels included.

I leave feeling upbeat and optimistic, a feeling I did not expect when I first arrived. I thought it might be depressing to see the kids trying to play soccer with so many obstacles to their success. I was wrong.

The kids are still running on the grass field, while the game on the basketball court-cum-soccer field is winding down. Music is still pouring from the loudspeakers, parents are chatting and laughing, and the kids do what kids always do. They play.

For more information on TOPSoccer in Merced County, go to McSwain TOPSoccer on Facebook.

This story was originally published May 29, 2015 at 1:45 PM with the headline "Brigitte Bowers: Soccer program offers a new kind of challenge for these kids."