Wheelchair Soccer Match Ends In 0 Goals, 216 Hand Ball Violations

Story by Logan Thompson 

| Published Dec 1, 2009

Fans left Lincoln’s Devaney Center in disappointment Saturday, seven hours after they arrived to see Nebraska’s first ever amateur indoor wheelchair soccer match. The game, paid for by Gold Bond Medicated Foot Powder, ended with zero goals scored and zero red cards. But gameplay was slowed greatly by a staggering 216 handball violations between the two teams.

“All those penalties really killed us,” said Dave Carr, a center forward for one of the teams. “Once we started messing up it was difficult to get our footing mentally. We thought the other team was going to start running all over us, but luckily they ended up getting almost as many (handball violations) as we did.”

In this variation of soccer, players try to move the ball by running into it with their wheelchairs. As with traditional soccer, they are not allowed to touch the ball with their hands.

Carr’s coach, Dan Taylor, explained why players run into problems. “It’s impossible to get a ball to roll in a straight line when it’s coming off a wheel,” Taylor said. “With a foot it’s easy, and these guys can still kind of roll their feet into it, but steering and all that . . . It’s just a mess.”

Out of frustration, players often reach for the ball, either to direct it or to get it out of a tight spot. That’s when they earn a handball violation.

“We all did it,” said Randy Porell, another participant from Saturday’s game. Porell had 25 handball violations, the most of any player. “At the beginning of the game, we thought we could get a leg up on the other team after they had a lot of penalties. We underestimated the frustration we would run into, and those guys just stopped us in our tracks. Neither team could get a leg up on the other.

Another match has been scheduled for the spring, but some fans are predicting low attendance.

“I don’t think anybody who was there will be going back,” said Leanne Barret, who was in attendance Saturday. “It was pretty terrible.”