Story by Ryan Gauthier, rjgauthier@health.missouri.edu

Jessica Lamb, a post-professional Occupational Therapy Doctorate student at the University of Missouri, is merging her passions for occupational therapy and soccer to create a groundbreaking initiative with U.S. Soccer.

Through her doctoral capstone project, Lamb has developed a training module aimed at equipping coaches with the skills they need to better support athletes with hidden disabilities, including autism, ADHD and other learning differences.

Lamb, an occupational therapist for more than a decade, always has been drawn to working with children, particularly those with special needs. Lamb’s inspiration stems from personal experience: Her son, Oliver, is autistic, and navigating the world of youth sports with him illuminated gaps in accessibility and understanding.

“We tried all different programs — soccer, baseball and other things — and something wasn’t right,” she said. “It wasn’t that the programs were bad. It just wasn’t meeting all of his needs.”

While the intent to be inclusive was there, Lamb said, many programs lacked the tools to fully support kids like Oliver.

“My husband and I are soccer people,” Lamb said. “He’s a coach from England, and I grew up playing the sport. I wanted to marry my OT skills and with his soccer skills and create a program that is empowering for our athletes.”

That realization led to Success Through Adaptive Recreational Soccer (STARS), a program with Union KC Soccer Club, where her husband coaches. STARS pairs licensed soccer coaches with occupational therapists, physical therapists and speech therapists to help children with disabilities succeed on the field. 

Coaching the coaches

As Union KC STARS gained traction in the Kansas City area, Lamb started to notice a broader issue.

While many coaches were interested in getting involved with the program, they sometimes lacked the knowledge to be effective in engaging children with learning differences. While U.S. Soccer had well-established programs for athletes with visible disabilities, such as CP Soccer and Power Soccer, there were limited resources for those with hidden disabilities.

Lamb saw an opportunity to address this gap and fold the entire experience into her doctoral capstone project through the Mizzou Department of Occupational Therapy.

“I reached out to U.S. Soccer and asked how they were addressing the needs of athletes with hidden disabilities,” Lamb said. “They saw the importance of this work and wanted to move forward with it.”

The result was an online learning module that serves as a continuing education course for U.S. Soccer coaches. The curriculum educates coaches on how to identify and accommodate children with disabilities, ensuring they feel included and can thrive in the sport. Lamb also contributed a series of articles leading up the release of the module, providing coaches with immediate and actionable strategies.

In January, she traveled to the United Soccer Coaches Convention in Chicago to present a session focused on adaptive and inclusive coaching strategies. In addition to changing how coaches approach inclusion, she would like to encourage more open communication between parents and coaches. Instead of both parties making assumptions about the other, Lamb wants to bring them together to talk about how the program can meet everyone’s needs.

“Right now, coaches assume that kids with disabilities aren’t going to play. And families assume that coaches don’t want to help them. But then who gets lost? The actual child,” she said. “If a coach knew more, maybe they wouldn’t write a kid off as behavior. Maybe they’d understand that kid better.”

Ultimately, Lamb wants to create space for everyone to play the games they love. She hopes the work inspires other organizations to follow suit, noting she feels incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to work with U.S. Soccer on such an important initiative.

“As a parent and an OT, it is super humbling that a platform as big as U.S. Soccer wants to make a change,” she said. “They want to educate their coaches to include more kids, and I love that, because now my son is going to have an opportunity to play where otherwise he might be written off.”