MARYSVILLE – Zach Weaver is a football player. You know just by looking at him.
Dan Bates / The Herald
A good-sized young man, Zach has the quick, easy grin common to many athletes. And he is special. Boy, is he special. When he gets in the game for the eighth-grade team at Marysville’s Cedarcrest Middle School, excitement surges through the parents and other spectators. They know something good is going to happen.
Sure enough, Zach has carried the ball once in each of Cedarcrest’s past two games. Both times he scored a touchdown.
And the place went nuts. There were hugs and high-fives, and right in the middle of all this joy was Zach, grinning the grin of a champion.
You see, Zach is not exactly like other kids. He was born with a genetic condition known as Fragile X Syndrome, which shows up in approximately one in 3,600 births of male children, one in 4,000-6,000 for females. The condition, which often overlaps with autism, typically causes handicaps that range from mild learning disabilities to severe retardation.
On that spectrum, 14-year-old Zach is somewhere in the middle. According to his mother, Julie Weaver, he reads at a third-grade level. His math skills are at a first-grade level. His speech is simple and can be difficult to understand.
From birth, Zach and his family have faced the daily challenges posed by his condition.
“The road has not always been easy for us,” Julie Weaver said.
One thing she and her husband, Randy Weaver, believed from the beginning was that Zach should have the most normal educational experience possible. At his middle school, he has special-education classes, but also a few mainstream classes. The goal has always been to help him find a niche with other kids his age, which last year led his parents to consider that maybe, just maybe, Zach might join the football team.
It seemed improbable at first. Football, after all, is a violent sport and there is no violence anywhere in Zach’s nature. Like many with Fragile X Syndrome, he shies away from aggressive contact, which means he will never make a crushing tackle or deliver a jarring block. Neither can he play wide receiver. When a pass comes his way, his instinct is to avoid the ball either by turning his head or putting up his hands in self-protection.
Knowing their idea might not work – “We thought he might last just a day or two,” Randy Weaver said – the family decided it was still worth a try. Then a funny thing happened. Zach started going to practice and from the first day he was just part of the team. He never played, of course, and his participation at practice was limited, but none of that mattered. Zach got a uniform and he stood on the sidelines with the other boys and he was delighted. So were his coaches, who found him hard-working and likeable.
And best of all, so were his teammates. You know the stories you’ve heard about how petty and even cruel some kids can be? Evidently, those kinds of kids do not live in Marysville.
The other players “have welcomed him with open arms,” said Julie Weaver, speaking with obvious gratitude. “The whole team has really rallied behind him.”
Vince Cotroneo, who was Zach’s seventh-grade coach last year and is an eighth-grade assistant this year, admits he was initially unsure “how the other boys on the team would react to him. They could have ridiculed him, but it turned out to be totally the opposite. They all took to him so quickly. It’s just been beyond my expectations.
“If he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to be in the line, they help put him where he’s supposed to be. And sometimes the other kids on the sidelines will kind of interact with him and make sure he’s OK.”
As coaches, he went on, “we’ve always felt these kids were kind of special because they have a good camaraderie among themselves, not just with Zach. They’re just the right group of kids to be involved with him, and that’s been a real blessing.”
Around the school, said Brandon Caldwell, the team’s starting quarterback, “we don’t let anyone pick on Zach. He’s our friend.”
Another sign of acceptance. Zach now has a nickname. He is Z-Dog.
At practice, Zach generally sits out contact drills. He may go off to the side with another player, often Dane Widness, the team’s starting tailback and a longtime friend. While the other players thump each other nearby, Zach will carry the ball, Dane will grab him in a gentle bear hug and they will fall down together. Or Dane carries the ball, allows Zach to wrap him up and again they fall down.
Zach does not play in actual games, but in middle-school football there is a fifth quarter, which is essentially a scrimmage for deep reserves. He started getting in briefly a year ago, although his assignments were different from other players. Cotroneo remembers telling Zach that his job on one particular play was to run down the field 10 yards. That was it. No blocking. No pass route. Just run 10 yards.
So the ball was hiked and Zach, lined up away from the other players, ran 10 yards. Then, his face bright with pride, he hurried over to Cotroneo, exclaiming, “I did it, Coach! I did it!”
Said Cotroneo: “That right there meant more to me than any game I’ve ever won.”
It was in the third game this season that Cedarcrest head coach Dave Boyle had an idea to do something more. He conferred with the coach from Marysville Junior High School and they agreed to add a play at the end of the fifth quarter. It would be Zach’s chance to carry the football.
When the time came, the quarterback went into the huddle and made the call.
“We call it Zach’s Play,” Boyle said.
The teams lined up, the ball was snapped, the players on both sides made half-hearted attempts at blocking and defending, and Zach took off with the ball.
“He ran around the end and into the end zone, and then he spiked the ball and high-fived everybody and walked off the field with the biggest grin,” Boyle said. “I had tears in my eyes. And then I looked over on the other sideline and all those parents from the other team were jumping up and down. It was unreal.”
Last week, Zach scored another last-play touchdown, this time against Monroe Junior High School. Again there was a celebration.
“Zach was ecstatic,” Julie Weaver said. “He thinks he’s a star.”
On game days, she went on, “he wears his uniform (jersey) to school because now he’s a football player. His siblings have always done sports and he would say, ‘What about me? When is my game?’ But now he’ll say, ‘We’re going to my football game.’ And he thinks all of this is just the greatest.”
He is not alone. Even though Cedarcrest has just a 2-2 record to date, there is a sense that something truly unique is happening this season.
“When he scored those touchdowns,” Cotroneo said, “I was thinking about how all these kids will remember this for the rest of their lives. They may not remember who won the games, but they’ll remember Zach and how excited he was and how much it meant to him just to be out there.
“And for Zach, I’m sure all this has given him the feeling that he belongs, that he’s accepted for who he is and that the other kids care about him. And that’s why, when he scored those touchdowns, I just had this warm feeling inside. I was thinking, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’”
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