As told by the Central Valley Ghostriderz
Nikki Cornell leads the Central Valley Ghostriderz Power Soccer program.
Nikki Cornell, founder–
His name was Jordan Rutledge. I met him when I started working for a local school district. He was very competitive and he enjoyed playing sports. I started asking around to see if there were some sports that maybe that he could participate in because he was using a power wheelchair.
When I found out that he liked power soccer, the first question I asked was ‘what is power soccer?’ I had no idea what that is, so I sort of went on this quest to figure out what that sport was.
Eventually I was put in contact with some people up in the Bay Area who have a very large following and very involved in the sport, involved in the United States Power Soccer Association– which is our overseeing organization nationally. He helped me to start some clinics here in Fresno, so that we could bring out players and see if there was interest for a team
Frank Cornell, head coach–
My wife Nikki started the league. Nikki’s a wonderful person, but she’s a dancer, not a coach. They’re competitive kids. They want to win period, so they wanted a coach to coach them to win.
Alex, powersoccer athlete–
I’ve been playing this for– I believe this is my fourth season. We came out here one time and it was– our jaws dropped because it looked really fun.
Nikki Cornell––
It just took time. We knew that there were three or four players who were very interested in coming out to play and there was just a big learning curve for myself, being not very involved in soccer and not really understanding the sport very much.
Also being new to nonprofit and adaptive sports, it was just really sort of trying to surround ourselves with people who could help us, who had already done things like this that came alongside us and then kind of showed us what they were doing.
It also took donations of power wheelchairs and materials, because at that time we were making plastic adjustable soccer guards for the chairs. So we needed to get our hands on materials, have somebody who is able to cut the material for us and help us make the guards.
And so, it was just sort of word-of-mouth, really asking people ‘hey do you know somebody who can do this, hey can you help us do this?’
There were a lot of people that came alongside me to really help me and encourage me and give me kind of a broader understanding of what we were trying to accomplish with the team.
*edited for clarity