As the Fall Championships are coming up in Virginia Beach, Tad Fisher isn’t just getting his soccer team, the Sharks, ready to compete. They have been practicing as if they are getting ready for the Olympics!
The team includes about 10 players, six of whom are on the field at one time. It is one of two teams in the area, with athletes ranging in age from teen-agers to early 20s.
Fisher largely got involved because of his 16 year-old son Luke, who likes to play striker on the Sharks. Fisher has coached Luke’s older brother, TJ, a high school senior who plays high-level soccer, including on the same field being used for Fall Championships. When Luke heard he would be playing on the same field, in uniform and with a referee, he talked about it not just for days or weeks but for months.
That was last year, when Fisher went along as a parent. This year, he’s going as the coach, and learning a bit from his wife, who coaches basketball and has accompanied Luke to State Games in Richmond for track and field. He considers it an “amazing opportunity” for Special Olympics athletes to have great accommodations on the beach and all the before and after events in addition to the games.
Older brother TJ has taken over the team’s training, which includes “dynamic stretching” before workouts and games. It’s basically stretching while moving forward rather than in one place, and It’s a good team-building exercise. The team also does skill-based drills before playing.
Fisher is a corporate lawyer for a venture capital firm when he’s not coaching soccer. His dream was always to coach his four kids, including two older daughters who also played soccer – so much so that when he started his job, he told his employers that coaching and getting home for dinner were more important than his salary.
“The unity that is Special Olympics, it’s a remarkable thing,” Fisher says. “You see somebody accomplish a skill (and) do something they didn’t know they could do.”
“We’re going to try to win. I want to be competitive,” he says about Fall Champs. “But if we fail, that’s OK. This is more just about the experience and the joy of the game.”
