Team Davis and Davis Legacy Collaborate for the Community
When Kelly Carlson first started the soccer program with Team Davis, all she had was two Pugg goals and the uneven playing surface at Holmes Junior High.
Fast forward more than a decade and Team Davis, a local non-profit organization that seeks to help children and adults with developmental, intellectual, and/or physical disabilities, now participates in the Special Olympics in front of hundreds of people with full-sized goals on the pristine playing surface at Davis Legacy Soccer Complex.
The annual fall program has become one of the most anticipated events in the community each year, and not for just those participating, but the volunteers as well.
After all, soccer is the world’s game and should be for everyone, not just the neurotypical and able-bodied.
So after running the program for a few years, Carlson wanted to improve its quality, and to do so, she reached out to Legacy.
Carlson knew the club well–her father, Ashley Yudin co-founded it, and both of her daughters grew up playing on the same fields that Team Davis and the Special Olympics now call home.
“My goal was to have it be part of the Legacy community and have the athletes there support Team Davis and to have the feeling of like they’re playing in a real facility with something that’s special,” Carlson said.
And as long as Team Davis were playing out at Legacy, why not have current players and coaches from the club help out?
It started mostly with Yudin as well as Carlson’s sister, former Davis coach Sara Stone, who would each bring their teams out to support.
“These kids go to school with some of the kids in the program and sometimes don’t even realize it,” Carlson said. “We have full inclusion in Davis, so I thought it was a good way to join the two things together.”
Those two things have proven mutually beneficial, especially this past fall when several full teams of Legacy players went to support Team Davis at their practices and then the Special Olympics games.
“It was very positive, Team Davis participants always expressed every week, how much it meant to them that we were out there,” said Legacy player Abby Paterniti. “We had an end of the season party. When I was leaving a few of the players came up and told me how much it meant to see me every week and tell me about their day.”
Paterniti attended every single one of the practices, but soon found that she wasn’t alone in volunteering.
“I brought some of my friends who don’t even play soccer and we would always say that that was the best part of our week,” Paterniti said. “It’s just a different pace, it’s easier to enjoy the little things, putting everything in a big picture, there are struggles that (the players on Team Davis) have every day and they become so happy with little things that we take for granted. It’s a privilege to go to soccer.”
For Carlson, she only hopes that this past year’s success will grow leading into the next season.
“We’re all in this together, that’s the goal,” Carlson said. “When we started this six years ago, the whole goal was that the athletes felt like they were special and that they could work together. People come up to me and tell me when they see these kids in the community. They want to be part of the community just as much as everyone else.”
For more information on Team Davis, click here.