UK Edition
Virtual hockey with Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh takes teamwork to another level for disabled players
"Every disabled group in the country should be doing this,” said Alan Pratten, whose son Will is part of the Flyerz disabled hockey team
Last weekend, Tunbridge Wells Flyerz disabled hockey team held their regular Sunday morning gathering as usual. Well, not quite as usual. Instead of swinging their sticks in a local gym - or now as spring has sprung out on the club’s all-weather pitch - they were meeting online. With 19 players and their coaches each positioned in little boxes on the screen like they were recreating an episode from the old television show Celebrity Squares, this was a coaching session like no other, conducted via Zoom. Though the energy levels seemed not to have diminished by the demands of social distancing.
“That was like watching Girls Aloud rehearsing,” said the head coach Francis Bridgman after the group had just done a communal dancealong. And it was indeed some sight, watching every window filled with someone gyrating, albeit not necessarily in time.
“For these kids, routine is a really important way of bringing stability to their lives,” explained Bridgman after the session has ended. “We knew how much value they get out of meeting up once a week, what an outlet it gives them socially. When the lockdown came we were very keen to find a way we could keep bringing them all together. This has proved far more successful than we thought possible. They all seem to love it.”
Certainly Will Pratten enjoys the new virtual sessions. According to his father Alan, the teenager who spends his life in a wheelchair has suddenly found himself on the same level as everyone else. Including his coaches. Technology has brought equality to disabled sport.
“This is an hour of doing stuff sitting down,” said Alan. “For Will it is a case of welcome to my world. He’s loving it.”
Flyerz is an initiative started by Access Sport in 2017, under the auspices of Hockey England, its intent to encourage every hockey club in the country to set up and run a disabled team. Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh, the 2016 Olympic champions, have been supporting the project from the off. And they have found it is not just the youngsters themselves who are enjoying the idea.
“What invariably happens is that coaches from the first team come along to help out, initially out of a sense of duty,” suggested Kate, speaking from the pair’s home in North London. “But they all agree it has helped them in ways they hadn’t thought of. They all seem to get as much out of it as the players do.”
And the Richardson-Walshes could see the enjoyment was barely diminished when they joined in on one of the virtual sessions.
“It was brilliant,” said Helen. “There was an awful lot of smiling and laughing going on.”
As was the case when Telegraph Sport joined last Sunday’s meet-up. The participants were invited to ask their visitor questions, which varied from “who is the funniest sports person you have ever met?” to “what’s your favourite type of Easter egg?”
“We’re kind of making this up as we go along,” explained Bridgman. “When lockdown started, we distributed a load of sticks and balls so they can play at home and we’ve been sharing training videos on our Facebook group. But what was so obvious from the moment we started the virtual sessions is that what the kids really get out of this is they love seeing each other. Everyone wears their club top. There is an amazing sense of belonging.”
This is the principal purpose of the Flyerz idea. Finding the next generation of Paralympians is not its priority. Rather the hope is to give young disabled adults the chance to glean from the act of whacking a ball around a pitch the same sense of community that so many of us take for granted when we engage in sport.
“Before this, the only experience most of these youngsters had of sport was being picked last,” suggested Alan Pratten. “They come here and the sense of camaraderie is immediate.”
As Helen Richardson-Walsh pointed out, the very fact that Flyerz involves mixed groups, combining youngsters in wheelchairs with those with Down’s Syndrome and Asperger’s, is part of its strength.
“Because children come from far and wide, it is really hard to get a group of similarly disabled players together to form a large enough group. With Flyerz there is always enough people to make them feel part of a gang.” That feeling held sway in the virtual meeting on Sunday: the Flyerz gang were meeting up. Here was sport as a unifying, social, integrating tool.
“This is such a good idea I’d be pressing for it to carry on after lockdown ends,” said Alan Pratten of the hour-long online meets. “It is not just Will, we as a family love this. Every disabled group in the country should be doing this and I bet loads are.”
And Kate Richardson-Walsh agreed that the necessities of lockdown have created all sorts of unexpected opportunities.
“As awful as this situation is it is opening a lot of eyes about how we might do things differently in future. We are communicating with each other far more online than we ever did before. When this is over, I think everyone will reckon we should do this more often.”