SPOKANE, Wash. – The Spokane Impact are coming home.
The hometown team of Project Inspire returns to Spokane this weekend to host their first-ever matches in the Inland Northwest after playing well in Colorado Springs last month.
The four-team league invites athletes primarily with intellectual disabilities, and welcomes all to play the world’s game.
“Being on the sidelines to witness what these athletes do, and how it affects them, emotionally, even just in a 40-minute game, from beginning to the end,” Shawn Peroff said. “The amount of emotion and progression they go through, it is something.”
Shawn’s son, Ethan, is the first-ever signing in club history, and he spoke with us about how much fun it is to compete with the Impact.
“Playing for the Impact team, it’s fun to play for the team,” Ethan said. “Have fun, play tough, be competitive.”
Current Spokane Velocity midfielder Nil Vinyals co-founded Project Inspire that created the team and league.
“Everyone says the word, ‘community’, all the time, but truly doing something about it is the difference between many clubs,” Vinyals said. “And I think right away, they jumped in, they saw the vision, they put in the time, the resources, the effort, and the commitment to make sure the athletes have the best experience.”
Some players like Jessie are pumped for the chance to play in front of a home crowd.
“I’m actually super excited to have people from Spokane actually come and support us,” Jessie said. “We’re very new, the team and stuff, and I’m super excited.”
The Impact have a webpage to purchase tickets for the matches on Saturday and Sunday here, and the link to watch the game live is here.
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