Courtesy of Travis PerreiraWhen I first met 32-year-old Travis Perreira, he was doing shoulder exercises in the Fitness Clinic for the Physically Disabled at San Diego State.
Travis, born with a condition called cerebral palsy, is an SDSU graduate and player for the San Diego Heat, a wheelchair soccer team. Wheelchair soccer is an indoor sport and is for people with varying disabilities. The game is similar to handball.
When I tried telling Travis I wanted to do a story about him, he interrupted with a sharp tone. “Is this on the record, or off the record?”
“Uh, it’s off the record.”
“Good,” he said. “Because most of my life is off the record. I don’t even know why you have that in your hands right now,” he said, pointing at my reporter’s notebook.
Not sure if he was yanking my chain, I asked which parts of his life were off the record.
“My job as a dancer at night and the fight club I’m starting are totally off the record,” Travis said. “Because you’re not supposed to talk about fight club.”
Travis, a Web designer and a program coordinator for youths, practices with his team against able-bodied volunteers, mainly SDSU students, every month in preparation for a tournament held in New York.
On Sunday, I was a volunteer. Upon arriving at the downtown YMCA that morning, Travis was already there in the lobby with Ricky. Ricky operates a motorized wheelchair and weighs no more than 115 pounds. Travis’ nephew, Cameron, was also there.
“Do you guys practice before facing off against us?” I asked.
“You guys are the practice,” Cameron said.
Feeling like a lamb being led to slaughter, I followed them into the gym where I met Kendall and Pedro.
Kendall, another SDSU graduate, is the team’s representative this year. “Nice to meet you, future unemployed alum,” Kendall said while shaking my hand. At one point during the scrimmage, I told Kendall I was going to cover him like white on rice. “Are you saying that because I’m Asian?” Kendall said. If there is anything he likes more than making you laugh, it’s women. Kendall loves women.
In front of the Heat’s net was Pedro, one of the team’s founders. Pedro has two hearing aids and says that being a goalie runs through his blood. When questioned prior to the scrimmage about what it takes to be a great goalie, the veteran said, “Focus.”
When it came time for kick-off, a volunteer asked, “Who wants to be goalie?” Looking around at one another for several moments, no one spoke up. I finally came forward.
“Focus,” I thought to myself as I rolled toward our net. It didn’t take long after the game started before I understood their apprehensiveness of being goalie. The ball launched at my head with more frequency than a lie detector attached to a politician.
Most of the shots were cranked from the bulging biceps of Dave. Dave did the majority of ball handling and was like Kobe Bryant on the floor. “See how your dad’s not passing the ball?” Dave’s wife, Kristen, said to their children who aren’t more than 12 years old. “He’s a total ball hog.”
Kristen keeps score for the scrimmages. Her kids have hereditary spastic paraplegia like their father, and they both use their chairs to set picks for their dad on the court.
“They are an awesome family,” said 21-year-old Jacqui. Jacqui, who you can find sitting next to “The Show” at Aztec basketball games, is an English major at SDSU and one hell of a defender.
On the few occasions I found myself shooting the ball, Jacqui was there to send it back in my face. Whenever this happened, she’d flash a wonderfully innocent smile at me. But her grin didn’t fool me. Operating a motorized chair, I’d seen her reverse into one of my teammates, flipping him over. Another time, she broke the aluminum footstool on a volunteer’s chair while playing defense like Ron Artest in his prime.
Travis is also very stout on defense, and doesn’t make things easy for the able-bodied.
In reference to the volunteers, Travis said before the game, “I think it helps them to learn about people with disabilities in a different light.”
Then Ricky, the skinny man in the motor chair, randomly interrupted Travis. “I’m going to take my glasses off,” he said, which Travis replied, “If you join my fight club that I’m starting, don’t even show up with your glasses.” Ricky, who struggles when he speaks, got a kick out of this.
“One thing I wish non-disabled people knew about people with disabilities is that a lot of us don’t wake up every day thinking, “Man, I wish I could walk,'” Travis said. He then turned to Ricky and asked, “Ricky, how many times during the day do you wish you could walk?” Before giving him a chance to answer, Travis continued, “You better prove my point.” But Ricky didn’t.
“Like, five.”
“Okay, take Ricky off the record,” Travis said. “He meant five times a year, right Ricky?”
“Yeah,” Ricky said with a big smile.
When Travis was asked if he’d ever done something he was told he couldn’t, Ricky interrupted again, “I have.”
With Travis’ permission, Ricky was put back on the record.
“I was getting ready to fly in a plane and I had everything ready to go,” Ricky said. “The person, the company that I go with, they called me last minute … they told me I couldn’t go.”
Ricky wanted to go to his cousin’s wedding. When he called his aunt and told her that his supervisor wasn’t going to let him, and that he was no longer going to be accompanied by anyone, she told Ricky to get his butt on the plane anyway.
“That was the first time I flew by myself.”
Ricky didn’t walk that day. He flew.
8212; Matthew McClanahan is a journalism senior.
8212;This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.
