The hardest part about playing football for Reid Maxwell as a transtibial amputee was convincing his mom.
“At first she was nervous but now she is completely fine with it,” said Maxwell, a left tackle and tight end for the peewee Colts in the St. Albert Minor Football Association.
Football is the latest sporting endeavour for the 11-year-old born without a lower right leg.
“I enjoy being outside and my parents (Duncan and Fiona) will yell at me if I don’t,” said Maxwell, a "differently-abled" competitor with the Olympian Swim Club and Juventus Cycling Club who also snowboards and is interested in playing lacrosse and sledge hockey.
“Well, we don’t yell at you but we certainly wouldn’t be very happy if you sat around and did nothing all the time,” Duncan said. “We don’t push Reid. Reid kind of pushes himself and this was all him. SAMFA came out to the schools and they did a demo day for the kids and he came home and wanted to play football. The only sticking point was the agreement of the doctors and once his doctors agreed, absolutely.
“He is pretty intrinsically motivated. He’s happy to do it himself, so away we go.”
Maxwell also suffers from Prune Belly Syndrome, a rare disorder characterized by a lack of abdominal muscles.
“That was another one of the worries we had with him playing football,” said Duncan of the uncommon birth defect that occurs mainly in males. “He is actually pretty lean but because of the absence of the musculature his stomach looks larger than it is.”
The physical challenges haven’t stopped Maxwell from having a blast on the football field.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said the Grade 6 Muriel Martin student. “It’s fun to hit people when you’re annoyed.”
The first few practices “I was nervous because I felt like an odd one out on the team but then I made a couple of friends,” said Maxwell, who is noticeable on the gridiron with the prosthetic device. “Sometimes I don’t wear the sock but when I wear the sock you can still see the outline of my leg.”
Maxwell’s prosthetics for various activities, except for swimming, are custom-made in St. Albert and cost between $10,000 and $12,000, and are covered through the War Amps and Alberta Aids to Daily Living.
Maxwell is at the stage in the season where he feels comfortable huddling up with the Colts.
“I'm able to keep up with the team, I started getting faster at running, and I'm having more understanding what my team will do in certain situations,” said Maxwell, who wears the same 49 jersey number as rookie linebacker Shaquem Griffin of the Seattle Seahawks, his favourite NFL team. Griffin is an amputee with one hand.
As for the 0-1-1 Colts, “We’re a decently small team,” said Maxwell, the tallest player on the junior varsity squad. “We’ve been (playing) people usually a helmet height taller than me.”
Gabriel Forbes, assistant coach and offensive coordinator of the Colts, is Maxwell’s biggest fan.
“Honestly, I’m so proud of him because you wouldn’t get boys out here without a leg, right? Never once do I hear a word of complaint from him like, 'I don’t want to run or I can’t run or it hurts,' ” Forbes said. “He might be slow but oh boy does he find it deep down in him and come out and run hard and he works hard every day. He asked to get the ball and we try and get the ball to him but he’s happy just helping the team out.
“It’s amazing what that kid does.”
Maxwell’s main strength, according to Forbes, is “Getting low. You wouldn’t imagine somebody with a leg off by the knee to get low but that man gets low and every time. We never have to tell him to get low. It’s truly impressive,” said the behemoth Grade 12 right tackle and nose tackle with the St. Albert High Skyhawks.
Coaching a unique athlete like Maxwell has been a pleasant challenge.
“It’s kind of strange because you run the line of you don’t want to push him too hard because honestly it does hurt, it’s something that is there, but you don’t want to single him out because he doesn’t want to be singled out. He doesn’t want to be the kid that is held back by this so you just come up to him away from all the other kids and kind of check in with him. You’re like, ‘Hey how are you doing? How’s it feeling?’ and every time it’s, ‘I’m good coach.’ So you go, ‘All right. Let’s get moving,’ ” said Forbes, one of eight junior coaches, SAMFA alumni or current high school players assisting with various atom, peewee and bantam teams in St. Albert.
Does Maxwell consider himself a disabled athlete?
“Not really,” he said, but noted: “At one point a bunch of people were throwing insults at me and it started to make me feel different but then it started stopping.”
“You’re not disabled in my mind,” Duncan added. “It’s different when you’re the parent because I don’t look at Reid as being different from any other kids. In the morning when we get up you put on your pants one leg at a time, while Reid puts his leg on first and then he puts his pants on but otherwise he’s completely normal. He participates in all these sports. He goes to school. He has friends. He does everything that a normal person does. There’s nothing significantly different, although there are some challenges that come with any disability. I find more often than not if we give him the opportunity he figures how to make do and how he can best perform whatever task it might be, and he just does it.
“Am I proud of him? I have a daughter (12-year-old Renae) who doesn’t have disabilities per se but am I more proud of him than I am of her? Not really, because like I said, I don’t perceive him as being different but certainly I’m very aware of the fact that a lot of other people perceive Reid as being inspirational. To me he’s Reid. He’s not just inspirational because he does sports, he’s inspirational because he tries to be a good person, he’s nice to other people, he takes part in sports but he does other things too. He works at school. He helps around the house. He’s just a good kid.”
Maxwell doesn’t consider himself special.
“I’ve never really noticed that I'm being a role model except some people say it. I've just never really thought about it,” said the junior CHAMP counsellor in the War Amps program.
As for the best advice Maxwell would give an individual with a disability interested in participating in sports, “If you want to try it, just do it. Try your best and if you're not all that good at it you can try another sport. You just have to want to keep trying.”
