Soccer Provides Goal for Developmentally Disabled

Marianne Bautista watched from the sidelines at Arroyo Vista Community Park as her mildly autistic daughter, Melanie, hunted for a soccer ball somewhere in a pack of milling kids.

“OK, she does not know what’s going on,” Bautista said. “Oh wait, there she goes.”

The ball had emerged, and suddenly 10 children, including Melanie, charged downfield after it, a disorganized mass of kicking feet. Soon one of the children, it was impossible to tell quite who, had kicked the ball across the goal line.

The players will not make the World Cup anytime soon. But they are, in their own way, sports pioneers. They belong to Moorpark’s first soccer team for developmentally disabled children.

The children represent a wide range of disabilities, skill levels and attention spans, posing a challenge for the coaches. But parents say they are both happy to see their kids learning a team sport and pleased to find coaches who can give the children the time and understanding they need.

“These people have the patience to teach [Melanie] to play, whereas someone else would expect her to know how,” Bautista said.

Although the team is unusual, it is not unique. Thousand Oaks already has a soccer team for developmentally disabled youth, and the two teams plan to play each other twice each month during the fall. Both are part of a nationwide effort by the American Youth Soccer Organization to create teams for disabled kids.

The new team came together through the efforts of one Moorpark family with experience in soccer and sports for the disabled. Gary Shaw, who teaches adaptive physical education in the Los Angeles Unified School District, said he and his wife, Tobey, realized that Moorpark needed more sports programs for children with learning or cognitive difficulties.

Fliers distributed at local schools yielded the current team, coached by Gary Shaw and his daughter Jennifer, a junior at Moorpark High School. The team, dubbed the Tiger Sharks by the players, meets at Arroyo Vista each Wednesday afternoon.

The practices can be chaotic. Some of the children are quick to pick up skills. Others need to see a demonstration of such essentials as passing and dribbling before they can grasp the ideas.

“You take the basic skills and break them down so they can understand,” Jennifer said. “If they can pick up that, then keep moving.”

Easier said than done.

One recent Wednesday afternoon, Jennifer tried to demonstrate dribbling, telling her charges that they needed to keep themselves, and their soccer balls, inside a circle drawn in the trampled grass. Some had it down, moving the balls with small, nimble taps. Others flat out kicked the things, sending the spheres flying well outside the circle. Still others seemed confused until the coaches showed them what to do.

Donna Wilson of Simi Valley sat on the edge of the field watching her daughter Megan, 10, learn to pass the ball back and forth while running.

“I like the eye-hand coordination--that helps her to do better in school,” Wilson said, pausing to yell “Go, Megan!” as her daughter trotted downfield.

“She’s just happy to be working on a team and working toward a goal,” Wilson said.

Megan, out of breath and beaming, came running to the sidelines. “I like it!” she said. “I liked kicking it.”

Although some of the players are just beginning to understand the game, Gary Shaw hopes to mold them into a competitive soccer team, capable of playing regular youth teams. They have already tried playing a practice game against each other, he said.

“It worked out great,” he said. “We put them out there, we gave them a little verbal direction and they scored goals.”