Spokane Impact provides new opportunities for soccer players who have disabilities
Booming laughter and lively conversations from parents on the sideline filled the air Tuesday at the HUB Sports Centers for Day 1 of Spokane Impact’s soccer team tryouts.
During a water break, 28-year-old Anna McCoy ran over from where she was catching her breath to say hi to her father and give him a quick kiss on the cheek before sprinting back onto the field.
Anna McCoy’s mother and father, Matt and Marnie McCoy, cheered for her the entire time from the sidelines. Their eyes, just like all the parents and family gathered, rarely strayed from watching their loved ones play soccer.
Across the globe, billions of people follow and play soccer, making it the most popular sport in the world. With more than 200 different soccer leagues spanning the planet, many hopeful professionals have plenty of opportunities to play their favorite sport at the highest level.
But that same opportunity to play at the highest level with a stadium full of encouraging fans is not available for people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.
That is, until now.
Project Inspire is a new co-ed soccer league that gives people ages 16 and older with disabilities the chance to compete in a professional setting. Colorado Springs, Colorado; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Houston will join Spokane Impact this fall as the four teams competing in the inaugural season.
Nil Vinyals is a midfielder for the Spokane Velocity men’s professional soccer team and a founder of Project Inspire. Before coming to Spokane, Vinyals played four years for the Richmond Kickers, where he was named to an All-League team twice. It was while with the Kickers that Vinyals, along with Joao Gomiero, decided to create Project Inspire.
During a weekly hourlong recreational soccer event in Richmond, Virginia, for people with disabilities called RVAccess, Vinyals said a young soccer fan named Ryan came up to him and asked when it was his turn to try out for the Richmond Kickers. Vinyals and Gomiero looked at each other and thought it was unfair that they got to play on the team, when Ryan couldn’t. That happened toward the end of the 2023 season.
By early 2024, the pair got to work. They managed to secure a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Soccer Federation to jump-start Project Impact’s first season. That money, divided among the four teams, helps to send athletes on their trips, pay for their food, hotel, plane tickets, kits, shin guards, cleats and more. Other sponsors, both local, national and corporate have pitched in to make Project Inspire a reality.
Originally hailing from Barcelona, Spain, Vinyals said there’s a league in Spain for people with disabilities called La Liga Genuine that has greatly influenced Project Inspire. La Liga Genuine started as a 17-team league in 2017 and has grown to a 47-team league. Vinyals hopes that Project Inspire can mirror the success of La Liga Genuine. If all goes well the first season, Vinyals said Project Inspire will go from four to eight teams next year. Vinyals said they already have plans to start the 2026 season in late February to align with the United Soccer League’s schedule instead of starting in July.
Matches will be played in Football-8 format with four periods of 10 minutes each. While a portion of Spokane Impact is similar to what one might see from Real Madrid or Manchester United, the scoring system for Project Inspire is a bit different. Every quarter, each team gets a point, but the winning team gets three points. A tie means both teams get two points. Vinyals said this format essentially means the athletes are playing four games in one.
For four weekends in the fall and spilling into winter teams travel and play games starting Aug. 22 at the Switchback Stadium in Colorado. Once the team is finalized, they have about four weeks of practice until the season starts. The championship game, along with a skills challenge and All-Star game, will take place in Houston on Nov. 22 -23. The games in Spokane will take place Sept. 13 -14 at ONE Spokane Stadium.
“At the core of our mission, we’re trying to improve the well-being and inclusivity of people with intellectual disabilities through sports competition,” Vinyals said. “The well-being part is an important piece for us. So we’re going to be providing nutritional plans through an international company, a fitness app specifically for the athletes and, of course, coaching education.”
Forging a team
Wearing a sunhat from a recent vacation to Mexico, Mike Pellicio, the new head coach of Spokane Impact, was all smiles during Tuesday’s tryouts. He said everyone who showed up – 16 people ranging in age from 16 to 40 – were hardworking, positive and extremely kind to each other.
Pellicio started tryouts with some dynamic stretching and simple warm ups with the ball to see how comfortable the athletes were before jumping into one-on-ones. After that, the athletes did a relay race to get competitive juices flowing and to ease tension. Tryouts ended with some skill work and scrimmaging.
“Tryouts is such a weird word,” Pellicio said. “(We told) jokes here and there. Told them I was watching cat videos on my Instagram, which I wasn’t. We were just trying to make sure they felt super comfy and welcome.”
If anyone is interested in joining the team, they can email Pellicio, who said he will answer within a couple days and set up a time for that athlete to come show the coaching staff their soccer expertise. Not everyone will be a perfect fit, but Pellicio wants the team to be as inclusive and flexible as possible.
When he’s not coaching boys soccer at Shadle Park High School or girls soccer at Mt. Spokane High School, Pellicio is teaching special needs classes at Shadle Park. He said he never really had a choice other than to follow a bouncing soccer ball wherever it took him. Even his parents met on a soccer pitch.
Pellicio has four assistant coaches helping him with the Spokane Impact team but expects even more to be joining the roster before long. Because the team will travel to play the three other teams, chaperones and extra hands are needed. All of his assistant coaches are either para-educators, teachers or coaches of some sort.
Pellicio said he’s thrilled to blend what he does in the classroom as a “curator of joy” with his love for soccer. But his career path didn’t exactly go how he imagined.
“I thought I’d be a college soccer coach sitting on a sideline in one of those foldy chairs with a frown on my face, evaluating players very seriously,” Pellicio said. “That’s where I thought coaching would take me. And I’ve done that, too. It’s not the worst life, but this is way better. It’s just way more fulfilling and valued.”
Pellicio’s goal is creating a program that is inclusive and fun for players socially and competitively. When the season wraps up, he hopes that players felt they belonged, they developed some skills and that they had loads of fun.
Reilly Harnetiaux, the director of community engagement for United Soccer League Spokane and one of the people running the Spokane Impact team, said the biggest challenge they faced was creating a new team in the middle of the Zephyr’s and Velocity’s season.
Harnetiaux said her initial reaction when Vinyals proposed the idea to her and her parents, Katie and Ryan Harnetiaux, the owners of USL Spokane, was bewilderment over how Vinyals had the time to dream up such a concept as a busy professional athlete. The decision to join Project Inspire was a “no-brainer” for the Harnetiauxes. She expects the roster to consist of 18 to 23 players, but only about 13 of the players will travel for games at a time.
“I hope everybody today feels like they were seen and that they competed hard,” Harnetiaux said. “Ideally, our coaching staff goes home and says, ‘We have a lot of hard decisions to make because everybody was good and because everybody was competitive and everybody gave it their all.’ ”
Anna McCoy’s housemate, Lauren Jones, seemed to enjoy trying out. When her mom, Anne Jones, asked what her favorite part was, Lauren answered enthusiastically: “Everything!”
More specifically, Lauren was excited that she saw old friends and met new ones. Scoring two goals during tryouts was the cherry on top.
Anne Jones and Marnie McCoy met more than 30 years ago when they were both teaching English in Japan. After that, they happened to move back to the Spokane area. Then their kids, Lauren and Anna respectively, were born three months apart and grew up as best friends. Now Lauren and Anna live together.
“The opportunity to travel, which will help her independence, and then exercise. A lot of folks in this population struggle with weight and eating too much, so physical activity is essential for our population,” Matt McCoy said.
On average, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities live 16-20 years less than the general population due to lower physical activity levels and limited access to quality health care, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, there are approximately 16 million people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities, according to the Institute for Exceptional Care.
Matt and Marnie McCoy said that they want their daughter, Anna, to be involved with the team one way or another. Whether she makes the team or not, they hope to continue to support Spokane Impact for years to come.
Alice Busch didn’t have a family member at tryouts, but she had plenty of friends there. She works for the City of Spokane Parks and Recreation Department as the director of Therapeutic Recreational Services.
The city parks programming started in the mid-1970s by parents who advocated for their kids with disabilities to be able to do something fun with other members of the community after graduating high school. The program offers year-round recreational opportunities, including crafts, cooking, baking, attending Velocity and Indians games, bowling, skiing and more. Just in the Spokane area, Busch said, she has hundreds of people enrolled in the program. At tryouts alone, Busch estimated about half of the athletes had gone to at least one event sponsored through Spokane parks.
Busch started with the program when she was a junior at Eastern Washington University. Once she graduated, she was hired by the Parks department as a seasonal staff to run the downhill ski program for three seasons. Then Busch got the job she has now, which she affectionately calls her dream job. She’s worked in the same role for the last 36 years.
Matt and Marnie McCoy think highly of Busch as she introduced Anna McCoy to the Powderhounds about 18 years ago. Powderhounds is an adaptive ski and snowboard program for people with disabilities over the age of 6.
When learning how to play a sport or anything competitive for that matter, it’s necessary to learn another important thing – how to lose. As the athletes huddled in the center of the field at the end of tryouts, Matt McCoy spoke about the importance of the Special Olympics oath.
“Let me win,” the oath reads. “But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”