Power Soccer

Maggie's wheelchair was fixed and she attended the power wheelchair soccer clinic yesterday. There were several players in attendance, and unlike Maggie, everyone of them was very proficient at driving their power chairs. The players and several coaches, were zipping hither and yon through the drills and eventually the game itself.

Maggie has very rudimentary power chair skills. With a ton of prompting she can go forward, left and right. She cannot go backwards, though and in order to make the chair do that one has to physically lift her head off the controls and reset the chair. In addition she still needs frequent suctioning. Accordingly, Maggie needs someone right next to her when she’s using the power chair.

There were a number of volunteers there and her PT Barb did it for a while, but then it was my turn. It was stressful. The other drivers were very adept at avoiding me, but keeping track of all the different moving vehicles as well as Maggie’s navigation and medical needs was hard work.

Maggie played goalie for a few minutes. She shut them out of course. (Ok, she was only in for a few minutes and there were no shots). The other kids in chairs rallied ‘round her to help when the opposing team got close and one of them stole the ball and headed down to the other goal and scored.

Maggie has to concentrate really hard to work that chair and the sensory overload made that difficult. After a while it was clear that she had enough; you can see Maggie wilt after expending a lot of physical or mental energy, and this required both. She lasted longer than I thought she would and she hit the wall about 10 minutes after I did. Everyone was a wheelchair user, but Maggie was the most complicated, as usual. That was a little tough for me, I forget that even among her “peers” she stands out for the level of her disability and medical stuff.

Her trach care, vision issues and lack of stamina put her behind the eight ball, but I doubt anyone else had more fun than she did.

Maggie using her soccer basket as a foot rest.