Eleven -year -old Norah prefers to play football, but in the municipality of Altena there are no clubs where the girl with Down’s syndrome can go. To get this done, her uncle Ralph de Ruiter from Giessen is now throwing a ball on. He wants to set up a team for children with an intellectual and physical disability. “Every child has the right to exercise.”
“Shooting and scoring.” Norah prefers to do that, she says. With a ball in her hands, she runs the field of football club GRC 14 in Giessen. A hard staircase follows, after which the ball ends up in the net with an arc. Laughter sounds from the field and she knocks down her arms like Cristiano Ronaldo. “Goal!”
“Norah is all football.”
“Norah is really in love with the sport,” says her mother Esther, who looks at the scene from the sidelines. Every day her daughter kicks a ball in the garden. Even before the bus leaves for school, she is already busy. “She is all football. She also wants to play football at GRC 14 for two years, so it is poignant that she cannot go here.”
The trainers of the GRC 14 girls’ team, who has around sixteen girls between ten and thirteen years old, cannot offer Norah the support she needs. “Norah has the knowledge of a child of six, so that requires more patience,” explains her mother.
For example, the dance class, which Norah first participated, went too fast for her and she was watching aside. “But if you just do it, she will get it.” That appears a little later, when her uncle Ralph de Ruiter learns the girl to dribble.
“The lack of range of G-teams in the municipality of Altena, where children with intellectual and physical disabilities can play football, surprised us,” he says. At Kozak Boys in Werkendam and Sparta’30 in Andel there are already G-teams, but they mainly consist of adults and seniors, such as Ralph’s brother Richard, who also has down. “You don’t put Norah in between.”
That is why the idea arose in February to set up a so-called G-team for children like Norah. “She also deserves a place at the club,” says Ralph. He presented his plan at GRC 14, who immediately supported his initiative. “And that’s how the ball started rolling.”
Ralph called in the help of football club HRC’14 in Hurwenen (Gelderland), which has had a G-team for pupils for almost eighteen years. “They advised to always have a parent or personal supervisor on the sidelines, because they know how a child is feeling.”
“The smile on the face of children like Norah is my motivation.”
The municipality of Altena pointed him to the subsidy pots and also suitable football, a part of the KNVB that is committed to football fans with a physical and/or intellectual disability, supports the initiative.
In the meantime, one registration has already been received by a boy of nine from Wijk and Aalburg. With at least three registrations, the G-team can start after the summer holidays on the fields of GRC 14.
Ralph is looking forward to seeing his niece performing her passion. “Even though there is no ball from the floor, the smile on the face of children like Norah is my motivation.”
The goalfetters, more than football
The oldest G-football team in Brabant is followed in the series ‘The GoalGetters, more than football’. Limitations that play a role in daily life fall away on the football field.
Only playing pleasure, sportiness and friendship counts there. View the episodes via Brabant+.
