By Gary Curreri
From the first day working with the SABR TOPSoccer program, Niko Morfogen was hooked.
As a freshman at then Pope John Paul II, now St. John Paul II Academy, Morfogen became a buddy and continued to volunteer every Saturday until he graduated from high school. In his senior year in 2015, Morfogen was received the Coach’s Choice award.
Morfogen, 27, was so inspired by the program that he chose to follow a career path as a registered behavioral technician working as a special needs counselor with his primary focus on working with children with Autism.
He is currently in his third year of working with autistic children in Ashville, North Carolina. When back-to-back hurricanes struck the area, Morfogen went into action. He was spared, for the most part from the storm, but decided to help families with children with autism during the storm displacement.
“I work with little kids in a behavior clinic now,” Morfogen said. “I taught in elementary school in Florida for three years, while I was in Orlando.”
Like it was yesterday, Morfogen said the SABR TOPSoccer experience has left an indelible mark.
“I still talk about it to this day,” said Morfogen, who is taking online master’s classes through Arizona State University. “I was with a little boy named Nate every year, and I was given like a head’s up that he was one of the more challenging kids to be with. He had some aggressive behaviors and was a little bit higher need than some of the other kids.
“For the four years, we really bonded,” Morfogen continued. “We spent our days just walking around the fields and talking. He wasn’t really ready (to participate) the first couple of years, so I walked around with his dad and got to know his family. At the end of those four years, he would jump on me and want to play and eventually start to do some activities.”
Morfogen also remembers the smiles that the other kids and buddies shared.
“It was really, really beautiful,” Morfogen said. “I always looked forward to going on Saturdays and spending time with him. It definitely affected my life now just to see the difference you can make in someone’s life. We weren’t doing any sort of therapy. We were just hanging out. It was really cool to bond with him and see all of the other kids and adults as well.”
Morfogen said the experience “totally” steered him in his career path. While at the University of Florida (2019 grad), he taught preschool and majored in psychology. He didn’t play soccer in high school as he played lacrosse. He said he dabbled with SABR soccer at a very young age.
“While I was teaching at the elementary school, I saw a total disregard for the special needs kids and they weren’t getting the type of attention I felt they should have been getting in a school environment,” Morfogen said. “So, I got out of that and started doing what I always wanted to do and that was behavioral psychology.
“I just dove into behavioral analysis and started working in the child autism clinic (Hopebridge Therapy) up here,” Morfogen continued. “I knew after that, that was what I wanted to do and started my master’s work.”
In SABR TOPSoccer, it is a virtual melting pot of varying ages and backgrounds coming together to give back to the community. On average, there can be 170 children or young adults with special needs and a number of soccer buddies to guide them through the day.
“It is really cool because when I was going to school, a lot of kids didn’t have a lot of exposure to the special needs community or that many different cultures at all,” Morfogen said. “I think I learned a lot and matured a lot during those four years. Everybody knew what they were there for and that was to support each other and the families with people with special needs.”
Fast forward to early fall of this year, Hurricane Helene roared through the south and made landfall causing catastrophic rainfall-triggered flooding, particularly in western North Carolina. It was the worst Hurricane to hit the area.
Asheville residents banded together on a community wall to help their neighbors recover from Hurricane Helene. (Courtesy Niko Morfogen).
Morfogen sprang into action. He had no running water for a few weeks and a lot of broken objects.
“A lot of this area was destroyed,” Morfogen emphasized. “There were 115,000 people without a home. Once I was able to find shelter, I wanted to help the community. The flooding didn’t go down until a couple of weeks ago.”
Morfogen found a local bookstore where one of the walls had notes offering different kinds of help to those affected by the killer storm.
“I left my handwritten note offering my knowledge as a babysitter for anyone who had a child with special needs,” he said. “I was not offering therapy. I was just offering my time to the family so they could take a break, or they could work on getting their home repaired.”
There was one family with a 7-year-old boy and his mother that Morfogen was able to connect with.
“It was a great fit,” Morfogen said. “The boy was pre-autism, and we had a lot of fun together. I babysat them for a few weeks.”
“I’ll never forget my time with SABR TOPSoccer,” Morfogen said. “It was totally humbling and eye-opening.”
Our SABR TOPSoccer is looking for buddies and coaches!
To address the special needs of these athletes, each player has a volunteer “Soccer Buddy” to assist them at practices and games. In addition to earning Community Service hours, the smile in the eyes and the sense of another’s accomplishment is often reward enough. Buddies must be in the eighth grade or older to participate in the program.
This unique initiative is a community-based recreational and leisurely training and team participation program for young athletes with disabilities.
If you would like to join us, please email topsoccer@sabrsoccer.net.
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