Auburn Reporter - Sports Reporter Shawn Skager     

                                           Sports Section                                                                          

Aug 20 2009                                                                           



The last time Patrick Carpenter walked, it was a summer much like this one.
The year was 1981 and Carpenter, then 23, was fresh out of the Air Force.
“It was a hot summer, just like this year,” he said. “I went over to my folks’ house because they had an above-ground pool. We were swimming, staying cool and stuff.”
Carpenter said he was on his way to band practice when he decided to take one more dive into the pool.
“When I went and jumped in, I didn’t get my hands in front of me when I dived,” he said. “So the impact of the water brought my hands back to my chest, and I went straight down to the bottom.”
Without his hands to take the impact, Carpenter said his head struck the bottom of the pool and the sand that lined the ground under it.
“As soon as my head hit, it stayed there, and my body just rolled from the momentum,” Carpenter said. “It snapped my neck. It sounded like the Liberty Bell with a bunch of cotton in it, just a real dull ‘tung.’ I knew right away something was wrong. I just lay there because I knew enough to not panic. I knew my brother-in-law was there. I waited for him to jump in.”
Carpenter’s brother-in-law pulled him from the pool and called 911. He was taken to Valley General Hospital where he learned he had broken his neck.
Now, after almost 30 years in the chair, Carpenter still refuses to let his disability define him, remaining active in athletics, such as power soccer and helping his peers deal with their own disabilities.
Carpenter’s positive attitude in the face of diversity began soon after his accident.
“I stayed there (Valley General) for six weeks, and then went and did rehab at Puyallup Good Samaritan Hospital,” Carpenter said.
After four months of rehab, Carpenter said he knew it was time to get on with his life.
“I knew that there was nothing else they could teach me,” he said. “I knew right away I had to reeducate myself.”

“My mental state, I have to say, was quite exceptional,” Carpenter said. “A lot of guys say, ‘Oh, now my life is over. Now what do I do?’ But I didn’t take that attitude. Some psychiatrists told me, ‘oh, you have to go through depression, you have to go through denial.’ But I didn’t want to go through that. I just knew that I had to reeducate myself, and that’s what I did.”

Two months after getting out of the hospital, he began taking classes at Highline Community College and soon found a resource center in Montlake Terrace offering classes

Carpenter said the class resulted in a job with Rainier Bank, where he worked for 8 years and Consulted 10 more years before retiring.

“I’m more busy now than I was when I worked,” he said. “I am on the Board of Directors for the Northwest Chapter of Paralyzed Veterans of America (NWPVA). I also do a lot of volunteer work and peer counseling up at the VA hospital in Seattle. I go there a couple of times a week and talk to the guys coming back from the Middle East. If they have any questions, I help them out the best I can.

“So I’m quite busy,” he said. “I don’t slow down, although I probably should.”

After retiring, Carpenter said, he decided to get involved in athletics. Four years ago, he attended his first National Veterans Wheelchair Games.

“I got to do so many things that I never thought I’d do again,” he said. “They have adapted so many sports so that disabled people in wheelchairs could do them now. Trap shooting, air rifle, bowling, power soccer, track and field events and obstacle courses. This year we had over 600 athletes in Spokane. And it keeps building.”

Inspired by the annual event, Carpenter said he got in touch with Tom Bungert, who played for Rolling Thunder, a power soccer team in the Puget Sound area.

“I’d heard about it, and it looked kind of fun,” he said. “So I checked it out. This team was just starting out and had about seven people. We had a little scrimmage at a picnic and it was a lot of fun, so I stuck around.”

Using power wheelchairs with special guards placed on the front, where the foot rests are, power soccer uses basically the same rules as soccer. Teams field four players, a goalie and three mobile players. The ball is larger, and instead of throwing in from the sidelines, the players kick it in. Otherwise, the rules are about the same, Carpenter said.

“If you slam into another wheelchair too hard, you get yellow and red cards,” he said. “Like you would in regular soccer.”

Now, in his third year with Rolling Thunder, Carpenter helps out the younger players when he can.

“We’re trying to build the team, help out with the new kids and teach them basics, because coach has many othr responsibilities,” he said. “So I try to chip in.”

And much like his work at the VA, Carpenter said he also grabs the chance to help make the younger players understand that there are many opportunities out there not just for wheelchair-bound athletes, but other opportunities as well.

“I try to make them understand that there is a lot of things in life they can do,” he said. “So hopefully I can help them by leading by example and sharing my experiences.”

More information on Rolling Thunder can be found at www.rollingthundr.org .


Auburn Reporter Sports Reporter Shawn Skager can be reached at sskager@auburn-reporter.com or (253) 833-0218, ext. 5054.
»

                                                      Sunday August 17th 2008 

                              SOUNDLIFE  Section

                                                ROLLING  START                                    

 WA - Sunday, August 17, 2008

HOME NEWS Top stories Local Crime & Safety NEW - SoundInfo Nation & World
PHOTOS BY RUSS CARMACK /ARTICLE BY BILL HUTCHENS /THE NEWS TRIBUNE

Marlo and David Thompson founded the Rolling Thunder team before she suffered a
stroke and began using a wheelchair.

They call themselves Rolling Thunder. And when you see these power wheelchair
athletes play, you understand why.

During a recent Monday-night practice, the soccer players filled one of the
gymnasiums at Tacoma’s Life Center church with thunderous noise: the clanging
of metal foot guards as opposing scrimmagers swung their chairs toward the
ball; the commanding shouts of play calling from player to player and the
laughter of friendly competition.

Rolling Thunder, the only team in the Puget Sound Power Soccer League,
practices twice a month, with about a dozen athletes. Scrimmages are fine, but
the league needs more players.

“We’re hoping to get a few more players and expand the league a bit and create
some more competition,” said Patrick Carpenter of Auburn, a fast and agile
player who is a Vietnam veteran.

As it stands, Rolling Thunder’s closest competition is in Canada, and the team
only gets to play official matches once or twice a year.


ALL AGES, ALL ABILITIES


Macy Westrick was born with cerebral palsy. The 14-year-old is headed into her
freshman year at Decatur High School in Federal Way and is every bit the “jock”
her brother, Brooks, is according to their father, Kirk, who coaches Rolling
Thunder.

“We tried baseball and other sports, but that just didn’t quite fit,” Kirk
Westrick said, adding that Macy is “a baseball nut.” There are few
opportunities for his daughter to be truly competitive, he said. In the past,
the Special Olympics was their only option. While that organization does “an
amazing job,” Kirk Westrick said, it wasn’t right for Macy.

They began poking around and found power soccer.

“We’ve not been a soccer family at all, but we fell in love with it,” Kirk
Westrick said. Macy took to the sport almost immediately, and after a few
practices, the team asked her father to coach.

“I’m a competitive person,” Macy Westrick said. “This is the first sport where
I’ve really been able to compete. It’s a lot of fun.”

Like other players, she’s tracking the progress of the United States Power
Soccer Association and the Federation Internationale de Powerchair Football
Association, headquartered in France, to get power wheelchair soccer into the
Paralympics.

Macy said she would like to compete at that level, “if I could get to the point
where I was good enough.” She’s one of the fastest, most agile and aggressive
players on Rolling Thunder, said league co-founder Marlo Thompson.

Carpenter, who is webmaster for the league (www.rollingthundr.org), found the
team through his buddy Tom Bungert, after a Paralyzed Veterans of America(PVA)
meeting, which they are both members of.

Bungert invited Carpenter to an annual barbecue picnic and exhibition match in
the Westrick’s Federal Way cul-de-sac. “I just really liked it,” Carpenter
said. “So I started coming to Monday practices.”

Both Carpenter and Bungert were among the players who deftly zipped around the
floor during a recent practice session. They have mastered control of the
soccer ball, which is slightly larger and softer than balls used in the
Federation Internationale de Footbol Association, the governing body for
worldwide professional soccer based in Zurich, Switzerland. And both
participated in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Omaha, Neb., in late
July.

At a recent practice, Bungert had to use a backup chair because his primary
chair had been damaged on the return trip from Omaha. He proved nimble and
effective at any position, such as goalie and forward, despite the fact that he
must use movements of his chin and mouth to control his chair.

Cathy Lee Ryan, a relative newcomer to the team, has been coming from north
Seattle to play in Tacoma. The trip down often takes three hours and requires
at least three bus or shuttle transfers, she said.

“But it’s totally worth it,” she said, adding that she’d like to generate more
interest and start an extension of the league in her area. “I’d like to hand
out some fliers (at King County medical centers) and get something going,” she
said.

Ryan is one reason the league needs more players – and more teams, Thompson
said. Having more players would allow the league to expand beyond a single
team. Perhaps, Thompson suggested, the Puget Sound Power Soccer League could be
made up of several teams from different parts of Western Washington. That would
give players a chance to compete on a more frequent basis and maybe even start
their own tournaments.

BEGINNINGS

Power wheelchair soccer is big in California and in the Southeast, said
Thompson, a Fircrest resident who, with her husband David and their friend
David Griffith, got the league rolling three years ago.

Thompson wasn’t in a wheelchair and didn’t have family members in wheelchairs.
She has never been a big sports fan. She just wanted to do something to improve
the quality of life for disabled Northwest residents.

Thompson was inspired after seeing power wheelchair soccer teams during a trip
to Atlanta, where she saw the Atlanta Synergy play. That team has become the
“mentor team” for Rolling Thunder and, in 2006, held a power soccer clinic at
the Korum Family YMCA in Puyallup.

Pete Spraw, a Spanaway welder, brings his son, Pat, to every practice. Like
Westrick, Spraw has volunteered where he can to help out the team. He dons a
zebra-striped shirt and takes on officiating duties, and he has made community
contacts to procure much-needed foot guards for players.

At first, players had to have vinyl guards attached to their chairs to protect
their feet. But after the team’s first trip to Canada, they saw the metal
guards used by other teams (“They let you hit the ball a lot harder and
farther,” Macy Westrick said), and Spraw got to work figuring out how to outfit
Rolling Thunder.

Contacts at Tacoma Screw and Bates Technical College provided parts and labor,
he said. Now, volunteers spend a few minutes before each practice affixing
state-of-the-art guards to chairs. The metal guards clang against each other in
practice, adding that “thunder” element to the game.

Not long after forming the league, Thompson had a stroke and found herself in a
nonpowered wheelchair. She’s still not a soccer player, but she said being in a
wheelchair has given her some perspective on the day-to-day challenges the
players face.

“I never realized some of the difficulties,” she said. “Things we take for
granted just aren’t there for them. Sometimes just getting through a doorway is
next to impossible.”

Her own home, which had to be retrofitted for her, was one of the most
“wheelchair hostile” places she’s seen, she said.

She kids herself about still not fully understanding rules of the game, adding
that she has to be careful to cheer at the correct moments during tournaments.
When players score goals in practice, though, it’s a different story.

“They’re all mine, so I cheer for everybody,” Thompson said.


‘AN INTERNATIONAL EVENT’


One of the highlights of the Rolling Thunder year (along with an annual
barbecue/exhibition match in the Westricks’ Federal Way cul-de-sac) has become
the trip to the Mountain Madness Power Soccer Tournament in British Columbia.

During the team’s first tournament, in Burnaby, B.C., in 2007, the group faced
tough competition. “They have a few more teams up there, and some of them have
been playing together for years,” Thompson said. “But they like us because we
make their tournament an international event.”

There, Rolling Thunder was known as “the Washington team,” Kirk Westrick said.
And it soon became apparent that Washington wasn’t going to take home a
first-place trophy. Still, the experience and the thrill of pure competition
provided more than enough satisfaction for the players.

Although the team’s record was 0-6 after the tournament, the players did
experience some victory. “It was late on the second day, and Washington finally
scored a goal,” Kirk Westrick said. “And you would have thought we won the
World Cup. The whole place erupted.”

Last weekend, Rolling Thunder played in its second tournament in Burnaby.

Macy, Carpenter, Bungert, Michael Pennick of Lynnwood and coach Westrick
represented Rolling Thunder. Since tournament play is four-on-four, Rolling
Thunder played the entire tournament without any substitutes. The team won two
games, scored nine goals and brought home both a bronze medal and a
sportsmanship award.

“We heard a lot of things that were complimentary in terms of us improving from
last year,” Westrick said.

Bill Hutchens: 253-597-8460

blogs.thenewstribune.com/gritcity

Watch a slide show of the Puget Sound Power Soccer League’s Rolling Thunder
online. League seek players



What: Puget Sound Power Soccer League


When: Practice is from 6 to 8 p.m. the first and third Mondays of every month.


Where: Life Center Church, 1717 S. Union Ave., Tacoma


Information: To join the league as a player or a volunteer, go to
www.rollingthundr.org or contact coach Kirk Westrick at
wetrickqsp@msn.com">wetrickqsp@msn.com.