Children in Motion: Together is Better

During the lockdown, Vadim asked his dad to make him a home gym. He trained every day on his homemade crossbar: he did pull-ups and 20 flips, then he sent a recording of it to his PE teacher. Vadim always enjoyed PE classes, and now he's a striker on his school football team. He used to paint but found that he preferred doing sports.

"I'm a striker, but I can sub as a defender. I love scoring goals; it makes the whole team happy!" Vadim describes.

Vadim, who has cerebral palsy and a developmental disability, is 16 years old and studies in 10 "E" at Moscow School #31. Although the boy loves sports, it was difficult for him to do stretching exercises—he couldn't bend forward and touch his fingers to the floor. He also ran very slowly and couldn't keep up with his classmates. Everything changed 3 years ago when the Disability NGO Perspektiva started holding classes at his school. At one of the classes, Vadim met a football player named Igor, who had won Russian and European championships.  The athlete had a prosthetic leg from the knee down and talked about how he played professional matches without his prosthetic. He uses special crutches with elbow support and kicks the ball.

"Meeting an athlete with a disability was eye-opening for Vadim. He realized that it was possible to become a soccer player even without legs, and that if he worked on his technique, anything was possible", says Gennady, his PE teacher.

He signed up for soccer and started going to practice twice a week. Warm-up, the game—Vadim takes everything very seriously, listens attentively to his trainers, and completes every task in full. Now he has good dribbling technique and is very fast—he runs from his opponents quickly and that's why he's able to score goals.

"I go to educational seminars by "Perspektiva" about adaptive PE a few times a year. I learn something new at each one that I can apply to my lessons. For example, games with moving cones can be played by children both with and without disabilities. You need to move cones with a volleyball, and it seems easy to the kids, but it isn't so simple. You're developing muscular strength, accuracy, coordination—things that all children need", explains Gennady.

After Vadim started playing soccer, his coordination improved, and he even started running faster than his classmates. At relay races he competes with older students. And at district competitions, he took first place in push-ups.

"Doing sports has also helped with social development. In terms of communication, he’s gotten better. For instance, if someone in a wheelchair asks Vadim to assist him, he happily runs off to help. When he's helping others, he feels needed and he really likes it", says Vadim's mom, Irina.