CLEVELAND, Ohio — “At the end of the day, kids just want to have fun, they want to smile, they want to run around and they want to be teammates,” said Andrew German, CSU Men’s Lacrosse coach.

• Jodi DeMarco and her children decided to share their love for lacrosse with the special needs community, by creating an adaptive lacrosse program
• Their efforts of inclusion recently expanded from the Olmstead Falls community to the Cleveland State University campus
• The next clinic is scheduled to be held in the Spring of 2020

Jodi DeMarco says every child, however, doesn’t get to enjoy all of the benefits that playing a team sport can bring.

“Every person benefits from physical activity, from social interaction, from playing with, learning with, and growing with one another, and sometimes those opportunities are harder to find if a person has a special need,” said DeMarco, Cleveland State University.

Two years ago, she and her children decided to share their love for lacrosse with the special needs community, by creating an adaptive lacrosse program.

“My children are the ones that come up with this idea, they decided that they wanted to be able to include some of their classmates in this sport, and we looked around for a program, and realized that there wasn't anything in existence, and so we started one in our community,” said DeMarco.

Their efforts of inclusion expanded from the Olmstead Falls community to the Cleveland State University campus.

DeMarco, who is a program director at CSU’s School of Health Sciences, recruited health science and occupational therapy students to develop a training guide for teaching lacrosse to individuals with special needs.

The students then trained CSU lacrosse players to lead the adaptive clinics, the first of which was help on campus in October. 

 Cleveland State’s Mens Lacrosse coach Andrew German says if any sport can be slightly modified to allow people with differing abilities to participate, it’s lacrosse.

“It’s not about a rim that's 10-foot high, or using your feet to kick a ball…they just took right to it, and it just makes a lot of sense, because everybody just wants to move.  I don't care if it's adaptive lacrosse, regular lacrosse, whatever it is, kids just want to move and lacrosse plays really well with that,” said German.

The clinic featured 13 participants with cognitive and sensory processing disorders.

“There were two sides going and they were, they were kind of competing, and every time one young man scored a goal he would, you know, flex his muscles,” said German.

DeMarco says the need for adaptive sports has always been there and she’s glad she decided to start meeting it. 

“We started with one kid that decided to come to our games, and then we've grown to six or seven kids that come regularly to our community program, and at our event in October here at Cleveland State, we had 13 kids show up. So, we are growing tremendously,” said DeMarco.

German adds that blending the academic and athletic sides of the campus was a win-win for everyone involved. 

“It just doesn't give you an appreciation for what they're able to do on a day-to- day as a division one athlete, and the opportunities that, that they have to give back is so important,” said German.

DeMarco and her students are now working with the team to expand the program, including developing training modules and distributing them into the community.

The next clinic is scheduled to be held in spring 2020.