It’s Always Goal to Go : Football Player With Down’s Syndrome Scores Points With His Teammates

Had the oddsmakers set a line on Luke Zimmerman becoming a football player, the wager ing against him might have gone off at about a million to one.

After all, he’s only 5-feet-4, 130 pounds. And he has Down’s syndrome. It’s a struggle for him at times just to put on a helmet, let alone reel off twisting touchdown runs from his tailback position.

No matter. Zimmerman, a 16-year-old junior, is a full-fledged member of the varsity at Beverly Hills High School, a sort of fairy tale in cleats with a goodly dash of Walter Mitty mixed in. He is the blue-eyed, tousle-haired kid who wasn’t satisfied to become the first Down’s syndrome student in memory to take part in the high school’s regular curriculum.

Luke went way beyond that, impressing the football coach, enduring two-a-day workouts last summer, emerging as one of the bona fide emotional leaders of a team that has stormed through the season with eight wins and only one loss.

“I don’t think the team would be whole without him,” said reserve quarterback Ben Gleiberman, who remembers times when the Normans have trudged off the field after a bad first half, only to be jolted by one of Zimmerman’s passionate locker room speeches: a rah-rah burst about kicking some tail, getting the job done.

Sometimes the words are garbled, despite years of speech therapy, but always the deeper message comes through--how badly Luke wants to win.

“The players will be thinking about X’s and O’s, but not thinking about heart,” Gleiberman said. “He’ll say something and we’ll say, ‘He’s right’ . . . and the mood lifts. We need him there.”

Co-captain Jerry Lafayette, the starting center, said he looks at Luke any time he starts to feel down: “I see how hard he tries. He’ll never let any player on this team give up. He’s a true winner.”

Like anyone with Down’s syndrome, a congenital condition that causes severe retardation, Luke has trouble with basic motor skills. He can high-step down the sidelines a la Deion Sanders, and he can throw a mean 20-yard spiral, but he is not fast or strong, and he is more likely to drop a pass than to catch it.

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Heading into Beverly Hills’ homecoming game Thursday afternoon against Culver City High, Luke has been sent into action for just four plays the entire season, all situations when the Normans had a big lead and were running out the clock. All four times, the quarterback took the center snap and knelt with it, so Luke has yet to touch the ball even once; most likely, he never will.

Still, when he was sent in during the final seconds of a home win against Morningside, the public-address announcer read his name and his No. 51, and the crowd stood and chanted, “Luke! Luke! Luke!” Some people wept, knowing what it meant to him and how much he loves the team.

Luke is the type of kid who wears his helmet in the locker room, who could watch football all weekend, who keeps his bedroom walls emblazoned with sports posters and pennants. If the Normans lose, he has been known to cry.

“He takes every loss like it’s the end of the year--very distraught, very upset--to the point where he doesn’t want to talk to anybody,” said head Coach Carter Paysinger, who believes his other players feel the push of Luke’s lofty hopes.

“It’s almost like when they lose, they disappoint him,” Paysinger said. “That’s the way we think he looks at it. And when we win, he can walk around with his chest out and be proud. I think it’s a big inspiration for these guys, I really do.”

Paysinger, a former Times’ Westside coach of the year whose teams regularly contend for the Ocean League championship, brought Zimmerman into the football program two years ago--at first as a team manager. By then, Luke was already a startling success story. He had been active for years in other sports--karate, Little League and swimming--and he had even become an educational experiment, of sorts, in Beverly Hills.

Usually, children with Down’s syndrome and other severe disabilities are taught in special education classrooms. Santa Monica High School is the destination for most such students from Beverly Hills; an extensive vocational program there helps them to learn fundamental living skills--including how to order meals at a restaurant, or how to ride the bus, or use a public phone.

Luke took a different route. By the time he had completed his special classes in seventh grade, he stood at a crossroads: Either transfer to Santa Monica and remain with other disabled students, or somehow try to stay where he was at Beverly Hills’ Horace Mann School, even though no special classes were being offered in the eighth grade.

It seemed clear he should transfer, but Luke wanted to stay. He knew just about everyone at Mann. His older brother, Drew, had graduated from there. Discussions were held. Weighing in Luke’s favor were several factors: He was outgoing and popular, a kid with a ready smile, a playful sense of humor. He displayed none of the emotional problems that afflict some Down’s children. His parents, Susan and Derk Zimmerman, were extremely devoted, willing to take on much of his living-skills training while cooperating closely with the faculty to design an academic program for him.

“When we started . . . I was real skeptical of this whole thing,” said Stephanie Schulman, who teaches the learning-disabled at Mann. “And when it was over I was thrilled.”

Luke had to learn even the most basic aspects of traditional education: finding his classes, dressing for gym, raising his hand before speaking out. There were problems: Once he threw another youngster’s backpack off the second floor, breaking something inside, Schulman said. On those occasions when trouble flared, Luke was marched to the office--the same as any other kid.

“It was kind of a rocky start,” Susan Zimmerman conceded, but her philosophy was always to let her son try. The way she sees it, a lot of Down’s children are held back because no one gives them a chance. “With every step these kids make, people are realizing they can do an awful lot.”

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Luke, the second of three brothers, was born in Evanston, Ill., and was immediately found to have Down’s, a condition caused by an extra chromosome that occurs once about every 700 births. The syndrome is characterized by several subtle but distinctive deformities, including stunted height, an unusually rounded head and sometimes even heart defects. Experts say most people with the condition never progress much beyond the mental age of an 8-year-old.

Finding out was a shock, Susan said. “In a way, you do grieve for the child you thought you were having,” she said; and yet, surrounded by supportive family and friends, she embraced Luke and reached out to support groups. She enrolled him in early intervention programs that kept him active, that worked on his speech and motor skills.

“I think the first thing you have to do is enjoy your baby, love your baby, just like you love any other kid,” she said. “This is a kid who’s going to bring you a lot of joy, and there are going to be some tough times too--but that’s part of parenting, part of parenting any kid.”

The day Luke graduated from Horace Mann, crossing the stage with his chest thrust out, he got a standing ovation. Half a dozen devoted teachers there passed him on to another core group of dedicated teachers at Beverly High, where once again he participates in a regular curriculum tailored to give him added attention.

During a home economics class two years ago, Luke befriended one of the captains of the football team, Eric Lipschultz, who learned that Luke was a big-time football fan. Lipschultz and another captain, Chris Wallace, decided that Luke just had to meet Coach Paysinger.

“They said, ‘Coach, we really want you to consider letting the kid play,’ ” Paysinger recalled. “And we sat down and talked for a few minutes, and, you know, he was a great kid.”

But the Normans, who had slumped to a record of two wins and eight losses the previous year, had a full roster of players, so Luke joined the team only as a non-playing manager. He wore pads and practiced during the week, but did not suit up on Friday nights. He first asked to address the team after the game against South Torrance that year, as Paysinger remembers.

Beverly had scored a dramatic victory when Luke’s good friend Andre Farkas caught a touchdown pass with about a minute to play.

“And [Luke] got up and he gives this Knute Rockne kind of speech, man, and the kids are all cheering afterward, and he’s high-fiving everybody after he’s done and everything,” Paysinger said, laughing as he told the story. “That was great.”

The team improved to six wins and five losses last year, and this year Luke was added to the regular roster. To what extent he has contributed to the Normans’ resurgence is not clear--many variables influence the fortunes of a football team--but undeniably Luke has boosted morale. He wants to make so many speeches that Paysinger sometimes has to shut him up. On campus he enjoys the same quasi-celebrity status reserved for other football lettermen.

“When Luke walks down the halls during school he’s seen as a football player,” Paysinger said. “Everybody knows who he is.”

And Luke is, of course, proud of it: “When he was in my P.E. class,” Paysinger added, “he would come in and, just to let everybody else know that he was part of the football team, he’d come up to the front of the class and say, ‘Hey, Coach, at practice today, what are we going to do?’ ”

His practices are not quite so rigorous as those of other players, but occasionally he takes a handoff and almost magically the blocks materialize and would-be tacklers clutch at him in vain.

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“They kind of look out for him without letting him know,” Luke’s mother said.

Games bring a gleam to his eye. He prowls the sidelines, drinking Gatorade, yelling to his teammates. During a recent victory over Redondo Union High School, Beverly’s first touchdown caught him by surprise: “What happened?” he said, staring at the scoreboard. “We have six.” The next score made him euphoric: “Now we’re going to beat them! We’re on the right track!”

Soon he was staring up at Paysinger in the coach’s tower, pointing to his own chest. “You know what this means?” he asked a bystander. “It means, ‘Put me in the game.’ ”

He got his chance with 31 seconds to play, the Normans leading, 42-16. He trotted out, but lined up too deep in the backfield and the coaches hollered at him to move up. The quarterback took two handoffs and ran out the clock. Luke was all grins.

He has friends on the team at every position. One of his best buddies is the team’s big star, Aaron Kogan, a three-time all-league running back and straight-A student.

Kogan and Luke now have a ritual: Every Thursday Luke tells Kogan the team’s going to lose, and Kogan has to argue that he’s wrong. It’s like a superstition--and so far, it’s worked pretty well.

Luke’s had Kogan behind him all the way, even when he made that first thrilling appearance against Morningside. Luke ran out to the huddle during a timeout, and Kogan came loping right after him--a surprise to Paysinger, who was on the field at the time.

“I was wondering, ‘Kogan, why are you in here? Now we’ve got 12 guys,’ ” Paysinger remembered. “But before I could say anything, he was leaving. And then after the game he told me, ‘Luke’s pants were falling, so I just followed him out and pulled them up for him.’ ”

Paysinger laughed, the long, easy laugh of a winner.

“Ah, it’s great, man. These guys. . . .”