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Amputee Soccer was created purely by accident back in 1980 by a man watching his son play basketball. Don Bennett and his son were in the driveway shooting hoops when a missed shot sent the ball rolling down the driveway in Don’s direction. When the ball got close, Don, a single leg amputee, rose up on his crutches and kicked the ball back to his son. It was a very simple beginning to what has become a worldwide sport.
In 1986, Bill Barry, a soccer coach with professional experience, established Amputee Soccer International with the help of Don, as the sport spread globally. However, not all countries were accepting of the sport. While Barry was on a tour throughout Europe introducing amputee soccer, the Soviet Union declined to have anything to do with it because they claimed not to have any disabled persons in their country.
Nevertheless, the sport grew quickly. The year 1984 marked the first official international amputee soccer tournament, held in Seattle, WA - from there, the sport took off. Over the following years, amputee soccer underwent rule changes to make the game more unique. Since 1998, there has been an annual amputee soccer world cup held in a different country each year. The International Amputee Football Federation was established in 1998, ironically enough in Moscow, Russia; however, it has since been disbanded. In 2005 the World Amputee Football Federation was established, and it is still the main governing body of the sport today. In the years since, amputee soccer has grown tremendously throughout the world and there are more and more people playing. Still, there is room for great improvement in the future.
amputee soccer
HISTORY
OUR EXPERIENCE
On YouTube it looked easy . . . almost too easy. For a second, it looked like having two crutches while playing soccer could be an advantage. It looked strange. It didn’t look like a “real” sport. Boy, were those notions wrong.
The group of us borrowed some crutches from the athletic training room to give it a try. At first, we were just trying to get around without falling or losing our balance. Then we tried to go faster—like the players on YouTube. It took us longer to get this down than we had anticipated, and we had not even added a ball yet.
Finally, we tried some passing drills and some shooting. Having been a soccer player my whole life, I was very surprised with how much tougher ball control was. Remaining balanced was crucial; one little lean backward could mean tumbling toward the floor. Once we got the hang of it, shooting proved to be really fun—probably more fun than it was in able-bodied soccer. Trying to figure out which angles worked and how to make solid ball contact was both challenging and exciting. Likewise, I did not expect being a one-armed goalie to be difficult, and it really threw me off when it was. It forced me to be much more in tune with my legs and feet than I was used to.
While we were laughing and enjoying trying out this new sport, people around us seemed to be pretty confused about what we were doing. When we asked a few of these people what their reactions were, many of them said they had absolutely no idea what we were doing. They had never seen nor heard of amputee soccer, and the idea of people on crutches playing a sport seemed very strange. People who regularly came to this sports and recreation facility said they had never seen adaptive sports being played there. They said they had never seen a person with a physical disability there, either.