This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
06/08/2011 12:00 AMMighty Casey's famous strikeout would not have bought gloom to Mudville if he had been playing Buddy Ball rather than regular baseball. In Buddy Ball, a program for young players whose handicaps would not allow them to play traditional games, no one ever strikes out. Instead, according to Stacie Boyd, the physical therapist for Regional
District 4 schools, players remain at the plate with a buddy to help them play until they hit the ball; each team bats around so all nine players get a turn before they take their places-again with their buddies-in the field.
Buddy Ball is just finishing its second season. Stacie and special education professionals Kathy Morico and Terry Tovey have been involved since the beginning, as have Westbrook Director of Pupil Services Kathleen Onofrio and Tracy Johnston, the director of Pupil Services for Regional District 4. John McKenna of Essex, a former Little League president (and a previous Person of the Week), has headed the program. The buddies who participate, one assigned for the entire season to each player, are local high school students.
"They are just phenomenal," Stacie says.
During the first year, Buddy Ball was limited to the towns of Essex, Deep River, Chester, and Westbrook. Some 26 young players participated in that first season. The success of the initial program, Stacie says, led to expansion this year, and Buddy Ball now has participants from Haddam, Killingworth, Old Saybrook, Lyme-Old Lyme, and Clinton. This year there are 60 players and 60 buddies. As a result, the local league is the second largest Buddy Ball organization in the country in just its second year.
"I love to see the kids getting up at bat. You should see the smiles on their face and it's wonderful to see the interaction between the players and the buddies," Stacie says.
Moreover, Stacie, who works with many of the children in physical therapy sessions in school, says that she can see the increased confidence in other areas from participation in the program.
The games, Stacie says, bring excitement to spectators as well as participants. Just as many children in the Buddy Ball program have not had a chance to play before, many of the parents, she notes, have never had the experience of being able to watch their children play sports.
"It's so heartwarming to see the look on a parent's face," she says. "It makes you feel so good."
In addition to her work with Buddy Ball, Stacie has started an ongoing program in the elementary schools in Essex and Deep River for children younger than seven who are too young to participate in the Special Olympics. The Young Athletes program emphasizes achievements in different motor skills and physical activities. At the end of the year, a representative from the Special Olympics comes and Stacie sets up a small platform that all the students can mount to get medals and T-shirts.
According to Stacie, physical therapists, more often associated with hospitals, gyms, and rehabilitation centers, are regular members of school staffs now, as a result of government regulations mandating accessibility and accommodation for all students. She has been the physical therapist for Regional District 4 for 22 years, working with students not only in the three elementary schools, but also in middle school and high school. At Essex Elementary School, the physical therapy room has gym mats, climbing apparatus, and a wide range of other devices to help students improve everything from eye-hand coordination to balance and core body strength.
Stacie says the benefits of mainstreaming children who would have once been segregated into isolated and self-contained classrooms goes beyond the evident good its does for the students themselves. It also helps other students learn the patience and tolerance necessary to adjust to the challenges of real life.
Sometimes, she says, students are so used to having young people with a variety of skills and abilities in their classroom that they don't even notice the differences.
"Kids who have grown up with this are much more accepting," Stacie says.
Stacie became interested in physical therapy in her native Swampscott, Massachusetts, in high school when she volunteered to work with a student injured in a car accident who needed help relearning basic physical movements. When she told her high school guidance counselor she was interested in physical therapy, Stacie says he was puzzled as to why she would want to go into the field. Undeterred, she earned a degree concentrating on physical therapy at Northeastern University in Boston.
When not at work, Stacie plays tennis with several of her teaching colleagues, but on summer weekends she participates in a more exotic game: boules, a bowling game with small metal balls that is similar to bocce. The group she plays with includes a number of distinguished chefs including cookbook author and gourmet superstar Jacques Pépin; Jean Pierre Vuillermet, owner and chef of the Union League Café in New Haven and Bar Bouchee in Madison; and Michel Nischan, owner of the Dressing Room restaurant in Westport and author of the recently released Sustainably Delicious. The Sunday-afternoon games predictably, given the company, end with special dinners.
Stacie and her husband Tim are among the original members of the group, whose cachet has ensured that there are more people clamoring to join than spots to be filled.
"The problem is no one ever leaves," she says.
Stacie and Tim first met Pépin through Tim's business and have now become so involved in boules they have even built their own gravel-paved court at their home in Deep River. This year, for their dinner, Stacie says, they are thinking about doing an Argentine meal, the result of a trip to Argentina to visit their daughter, who was spending nine months there. They have also done a Greek dinner, a reflection of Stacie's own ethnic heritage- her paternal grandparents came from Greece and her own first name, Anastasia, was also her grandmother's.
Anastasia, she recalls, was a difficult name, particularly in junior high school, where she recalls persistent teasing about it. She vowed that her children would have shorter names, hence Katie and Adam.
She recalls that when Katie and Adam, now grown, were younger, they would see her buying toys and ask if they were for the young students whom they understood she also called "her children."
"I love them all," she says. "I love this job. I feel terrific about what I do."