BY DANIEL SCHMIDT
THE OBSERVER
AUBURN — When Zach Dickey helped start the Auburn University Power Wheelchair Soccer team, he envisioned a program that would compete for championships at the highest level. It was uncharted territory, as no other university had a wheelchair soccer team, much less one managed entirely by students.
After going 14-1 and finishing fifth at a daunting championship tournament last year, the team recognized it could build upon what had been an unprecedentedly successful inaugural campaign.
Now, in only its second year of existence, the Tigers have already partially fulfilled Dickey’s vision by winning the U.S. Power Soccer Association’s Champions Conference Cup, punctuating a nearly perfect 21-0-3 season.
According to Walker Ray, who scored a tournament-high nine goals en route to winning the “Golden Guard” award, the realization didn’t sink in until well after the team returned home from its 2-0 victory over CNY United in Fort Wayne, Ind., on June 22.
“It was surreal. Once the whistle sounded and we had won [the championship], we didn’t know how to react,” Ray said. “It didn’t settle in until I got back to Auburn, and I was just sitting on my couch thinking, ‘Wow, we really won a championship.’ It was crazy.”
While the euphoria of winning the title took some time to fully set in, the feeling that the team was on the precipice of something special took hold long before the first competitive game in November.
A season to remember
Looking back on the program’s meteoric rise from being the new kid on the block to a serious contender in the sport’s upper echelons, it’s easy to see why the Tigers felt confident entering this season.
In their first year of competition, Auburn finished third in the 2023-24 regular season while only losing one game and recording the best goal differential in the entire conference. As they entered the championship tournament, there was no shortage of self-belief. That was until the realities surrounding the format reared their ugly head.
“Last year, I was convinced that we would make this magical run, and we got humbled pretty badly because we went undefeated almost all season,” Dickey said. “So I had this delusional confidence last year, and that kind of got reset, realizing not everything is in my hands.”
With an entire season’s worth of experience in the books, those who returned for the 2024-25 season knew exactly what to expect. The way Ray remembers the start to the season, it didn’t take long for the team to realize they were serious contenders.
“[We knew] really from the first tournament back in November. We went undefeated and nobody really got that close to us. And even then, we hadn’t played together for that long,” Ray said. “I think we had been practicing for a month, but even with very little chemistry, we knew this could be something special this year.”
That string of games proved to be a harbinger of things to come. The Tigers went on to win 15 of their 24 total games by multiple goals. They produced a first-place regular season finish. They went 6-0-1 at the championship tournament, won promotion to the Premier Conference and will play the nation’s toughest competition starting next year.
Despite the immediate success feeling like a fever dream at times, the groundwork was laid long before Dickey donned an Auburn uniform, or Ray, Lily Bamberg, Kyle Eggleston and Noah Griffith learned how to control their powered wheelchairs, the sport’s finer tactics and strategy or, in some cases, even what wheelchair soccer is.
It all began in Pendleton, Ind., 91 miles south of where Auburn claimed its first wheelchair basketball title.
Laying the foundation
Growing up, Dickey was like any other kid. He fell in love with soccer and basketball, just as his two older siblings did before him. However, there was an important distinction: Dickey – also just like his two older siblings – was born with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a group of genetic disorders that cause nerve damage primarily in the arms and legs.
As any true competitor would, Dickey adapted and overcame, becoming a local star in both wheelchair basketball and wheelchair soccer. By the time he was ready to go to college, Auburn University was already recruiting him to join its growing wheelchair basketball program.
“I switched to basketball because I had arms strong enough to move a manual chair. And I committed to basketball because of the opportunities. You can play at the next level in college, they have pro leagues, and they have all these amazing opportunities. There’s just one of those for power soccer,” Dickey explained.
Toward the end of his collegiate career, however, his condition continued to progress, and he could no longer play wheelchair basketball at the same level as before. That was when Dickey decided to turn to wheelchair soccer and give even more adaptive athletes the chance to compete for Auburn University.
In some ways, he was lucky. There were established adaptive sports teams already competing at the highest levels, and there was support and buy-in from administrators and other university officials.
Still, Dickey had to build the team from scratch. As it turns out, he didn’t have to look very far to find just who he was looking for.
Growing the game
They came from different walks of life.
Ray had started his Auburn adaptive sports career with the wheelchair basketball team and joined the wheelchair soccer team because a few of his former teammates had gotten into it.
Eggleston had competed for the Atlanta Sting Power Wheelchair Soccer Team while in high school and became Auburn’s first wheelchair soccer player on scholarship.
Griffith, long an advocate for improving accessibility for disabled students on Auburn’s campus, spent his entire childhood involved with baseball and basketball before a Friedreich’s ataxia diagnosis at 16 forced him to give up able-bodied sports.
Bamberg had never played a sport before but joined because she had read about Dickey’s involvement at the World Cup and was looking for a way to get involved on campus. Dickey joked that she went from not having a competitive bone in her body before joining the team to vowing nobody would score on her by the time the championship tournament began.
While it appeared the team was a mismatched group of mostly new players from the outside looking in, Dickey knew that winning, despite still being extremely important in his eyes, was not the primary objective.
“Disability has just always been a part of my life, and I’ve always had this built-in community. And that’s the other part of this that’s super important, because for a lot of these kids, it’s their first time being truly independent,” Dickey said. “They get to talk to each other about what it was like to learn to drive with hand controls, what wheelchairs are best for this and what wheelchairs are best for that, how they study in class. That built-in community is something that some kids miss out on if they don’t get sports sometimes, and it’s so important that we give them those opportunities as well.”
With those opportunities becoming more abundant at Auburn University and the school’s adaptive sports teams receiving increasing exposure, the program now has more cause for optimism in the future than ever before.
Looking toward the future
In the nearly two weeks since capturing its first title, it is unquestionable that the program has received a boost.
High school recruits who competed against the Tigers on other squads are expressing increased interest in joining the team someday. Players have received a flood of congratulatory messages. The most passionate fans in an already passionate Auburn fanbase seem poised to support the team even more.
For Ray, these factors have the trajectory pointed in one direction.
“I think [the program] is only going up. We’re finally getting some new recruits in, we’ve got two freshmen coming back, and this core has only been playing together for seven or eight months, so I think it’s only getting better,” Ray said. “We’re only going to learn more going up to the Premier Conference and playing those better teams, so I think we’re just going to keep getting better and better over the next few years. I’m really excited to see where it’s going to go.”
Even so, the path to getting the university’s wheelchair soccer team where it is now, despite the instant success, has not been easy.
There is still work to be done to ensure the athletes are properly supported. The vast majority of colleges and universities do not have a wheelchair soccer team of their own. And while more and more eyeballs are on the sport, a greater grassroots promotion of wheelchair soccer is necessary for it to grow to where Dickey knows it can get to.
But for now, he can momentarily rest knowing that it has well and truly taken off at Auburn University, which looks to become a leader in the sport moving forward for years to come. And after getting the opportunity to represent the school he loves so dearly, the chance to provide other disabled students with that same possibility is priceless.
“I wanted it for myself, and I wanted it for other people. And so that’s what we’re working to build: getting that same opportunity that able-bodied kids have had forever at Auburn, being able to wear the Auburn name across their chest, and how proud that makes them,” Dickey said. “Now the resources are there, and everybody deserves a chance to represent Auburn.”
