CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Athletes of all stripes have star players they can name with ease as idols, role models, superstars of their youth that they could point at and say, “That’s going to be me someday.” And soccer is certainly no exception, with the last two decades in particular showcasing the impact that giants of the game can have: it is still difficult to imagine many recent MLS academy graduates neglecting to include one of either Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo on their list of childhood favorites.

Nico Calabria struggled to have the same experience in his youth. It was clear he loved soccer, no doubt about that, and he surely had his own handful of icons of the game that he looked up to. But none of them would have quite looked like him – Calabria was born with a limb difference, in his case the absence of a right leg – and as a result had a hard time, not only with remaining competitive with his peers as an athlete, but more so with aligning his dreams of competing at the highest level with the realities of his condition, believing that accepting the latter would have necessarily meant surrendering the former.

“Personally, I actually didn’t even want to be associated with disability, with parasport, for a long time,” Calabria told revolutionsoccer.net last week. “I had my own internalized ableism I was dealing with where, you know, my folks were looking for opportunities for me – there wasn’t soccer going on, but other opportunities for kids with disabilities – and I was like, ‘That doesn’t really fit my identity; I feel normal, I feel like an athlete,’ and in my head, that and disability didn’t line up.”

But soon Calabria would discover amputee soccer – in some ways you could say it discovered him – and since then the Concord, Mass., native has risen to become not only one of the sport’s top athletes on the field, but also one of its strongest advocates away from it. And with the second annual U.S. Amputee Cup having just wrapped up, Calabria couldn’t have been more excited to know that young limb-different athletes now had idols of their own to look up to – even if he didn’t exactly know what to do with the fact that he himself was among them.

“At this point, it’s been an interesting experience,” Calabria shared. “There are a number of kids that are coming out to our games, and they think we’re superstars. And it’s a weird experience for me because that’s not exactly how I feel!” He couldn’t help but let out a laugh at the thought, before pivoting. “They’re recognizing how great this sport is, and that disability is now being represented as something that isn’t something they wouldn’t want to associate with. [Amputee soccer] is being seen as cool, as athletic, as fast. And I think it’s really powerful to have those kids see that and then have an opportunity and a pathway.”

After lifting the inaugural trophy in Columbus, Ohio last year, the Revolution Amputee Soccer Team, which counts Calabria as both captain and part-founder, was hoping to repeat in 2024, particularly now that the tournament was being held on home soil in Cambridge, Mass. The five-team field brought much stiffer competition than the tournament’s first edition had, and an untimely shoulder injury saw Calabria sidelined for the Cup’s latter stages, all meaning that New England would be facing an uphill battle if they were going to go back-to-back.

“Competition, man, every year … this is the second year, and already the level is insane, it’s competitive,” said Kelvin Jimenez of the Revs squad, nursing a Dunkin’ coffee on the sideline in between matches. “So, whoever wins the championship this year, it’s because they truly deserve it and they had to battle it out against the best the U.S. has to offer.”

The competition the Revs were facing – and the fact that there was a championship to win in the first place – was largely thanks to efforts that have come out of New England over the last few years to grow amputee soccer, with Calabria in many cases acting as the game’s chief proponent. Now, the captain, who spoke with revolutionsoccer.net by phone after the tournament concluded, said that the New England model has become one that other regions are eager to replicate.

“We held the U.S. Cup for the first time last year in Columbus, which was really the culmination of probably four or five years of work by a few different regional groups,” Calabria said. “New England [was] kind of starting it off, and being super supported by the Revs, which has been legitimately – like, all the other teams are looking to New England and saying, ‘How can we get something like this in our area?’ People look to it and they want it, because we are providing access to people; people can actually come out to the practices, improve, be coached, be supported, wear an MLS jersey, have these awesome events like in the stadium. And that just goes such a long way.”

Those events Calabria referred to started with an exhibition match played at Gillette Stadium during halftime of a Revolution first team match in 2019, and grew to a full-length match being played following a first team match earlier this season. The upside to the increased exposure brought by those events has been an increased interest in the game from across the competitive spectrum, creating a positive feedback loop that only helps to continue the growth of amputee soccer.

“There’s a wide variety,” Calabria said, “but we’re trying to build this so that we have a recreational league so that people can come play rec soccer – it doesn’t have to be super, super serious and super, super competitive – and then we have a group of people who want to be playing elite level amputee soccer, playing at the highest level and trying to make the national team.”

That high-level play was on full display in Cambridge; ultimately, it was a quality Miami side making their debut in the Cup that edged out the Revs for this year’s title. But in some ways, the fact that a newcomer could pry away the title from New England was the best demonstration of how far the sport has come in such a short amount of time – even if it wasn’t the on-field outcome that the hometown side was hoping for.

Kevin Chambers only joined the Revs Amputee team earlier this year – and, unlike Jimenez, he wasn’t a soccer player before his amputation.

“It’s been overwhelming, honestly,” Chambers shared during the tournament. “You know, we had the Gillette exhibition, and now we have the USA Cup, so I honestly feel like I skipped a couple steps with the soccer!”

But to be fair to him, it hasn’t been long that there have been a few steps to skip, at least within the context of amputee soccer; Calabria went from competing in an integrated setting, playing traditional soccer with kids without disabilities, to joining the United States National Amputee Team at the ripe old age of 16, such was the extent of the development pathway at the time. Now, Calabria and others have been working tirelessly to expand access and opportunities to young athletes with limb differences to develop their game and seriously consider a future in the sport.

“It’s been amazing to see how big this sport is,” Chambers said, “and, even in just [my] six months, how big it’s getting – we’ve got the clinics going on behind us, we’ve got all these youth players who are coming to watch us. It only looks like it’s getting bigger.”

Of course, Calabria recognized that all this growth was so important because there was still such a long way for the sport to go.

“Our regional programs now are recreational, youth, adult, and elderly, all at once,” the captain said. “We just put it all together as much as we can because that’s the capacity that we had for a long time. But as we grow, we recognize the need to differentiate our programs, just like if you take your eight-year-old kid to a game and it’s played with all adults, obviously that’s not a model for success.”

And the youth level isn’t the only aspect of the game seeing growth. Played as a mixed-gender sport for much of its history, amputee soccer has grown to the point of starting to be able to accommodate separate men’s and women’s teams, with the first-ever Women’s Amputee Soccer World Cup being held this year.

“This was the largest gathering of amputee soccer players in American history, this weekend,” Calabria said. “We only expect it to continue to grow. And also, this year we have the first-ever Women’s World Cup that’s taking place in Colombia – the women leave in about two weeks to go down to Colombia to compete for this first-ever international World Cup. So, we’re seeing the growth of the game for women. Since the sport was founded in the 1980’s it’s been played co-ed, but that isn’t really inclusive for women; you can play, but building a game for women amongst women is really like obvious that that has to happen. So, we’re really excited with the growth of our women’s program.”

But across both the men’s and the women’s game, perhaps the most important development for the future of the sport has been the growth of the youth game. And Calabria couldn’t hide the fact that it was the aspect of growth he was most excited to see, and to continue to push.

“Personally, I’m just super, super excited to be working on this youth development project,” he said. “We’ve been partnering with the Revolution and with CP Soccer New England, who has a strong youth program in this area, to do a series of clinics in the spring and the fall. We’re in our second year of that now, and we went from, again, having one kid in the area who was playing and I think we have eight kids now that have come out to an event, and we held a clinic at the U.S. Cup and had I think eight or nine kids with limb differences that were playing.”

And in much the same way that New England has become a model for the rest of the U.S., Calabria said that he was taking notes on what was working for the growth of amputee soccer globally.

“One of the things that we really want to do is continue to build that program here in New England but also offer a U.S. youth summer camp,” he said. “We’re kind of in the beginning planning stage of that for some time in 2025. The European Amputee Football Federation has a summer camp every year and they have over 100 kids that come from around Europe to participate.”

He took a moment to reflect on how far the sport, and especially the infrastructure around it, has grown in recent years, and how much of that growth he’s been able to witness firsthand.

“It’s been funny for me because I saw that program start,” he reminisced. “And now I’m starting to see those kids playing on international teams at age 16 and 17. So all of that to say, like, we are developing a clear pathway from youth to recreational to regional competition, creating a pipeline to our national programs so that we have a large pool of players to draw from, a far more competitive pool.”

If there is anything holding back the continued growth of amputee soccer across all levels, it is cold realities of administration, infrastructure, organization – aspects that Calabria and others have been more than happy to support, but ones that he recognizes he is not best suited to take the lead on.

“It’s an immense amount of work that we’re not set up to do as we’re currently structured,” he acknowledged. “With the growth of the women’s game, the growth of the U.S. Cup and all of these regional teams, we’ve gone from I think five regions two years ago to 17 now. It’s pretty quick, and we’re an all-volunteer board, and we’re recognizing more and more as these projects continue to grow that we need to take our organization to the next level.”

For as much as he does both on and off the pitch, and as prominent as he has become within his own circles, Calabria is a thoroughly humble man, driven simply but powerfully by his love for his sport. His character could hardly come through more clearly than when he is talking about that very game he loves so much.

“You know, I just do this – I don’t get paid to do this, I don’t want to get paid to do it – but I do want to fundraise so that someone can do it really, really well that has the correct skillset,” he said. “I’m learning and trying to figure this all out; I’m a teacher by trade, I’m not a business person. I just want to play! I want to play, and that’s what the athletes want.”

Fortunately, there are promising signs for the organizational growth of amputee soccer, as well, the kind of growth that could open the floodgates for how much further the game can go.

“Thank goodness that we found this woman Danielle Potemri, who really helped with the tournament planning,” Calabria said. “She’s our team manager, as well. But she’s been doing an immense amount of work. And we’re finding more and more of those types of people, and ideally, instead of asking them to do it out of the goodness of their heart when they have time or off work, we can start to pay someone to really run this organization and take it from just getting, you know, growing and feeling that all the things going in the right direction, towards, ‘We’re really ahead of the curve here and properly set up to provide way more access to this sport and grow it in the United States.’”

Amputee soccer has come a long way in Calabria’s lifetime alone, and there is a very real possibility that it would not have come nearly as far as it has without the time and energy he has committed to it. A young Nico likely would have had a hard time believing that he and other kids like him would have found not just a place where they belong, but a sport through which they can fully express their athleticism, their competitiveness, their inner drive.

“I look back on my own growing up and, dude, I just struggled, man,” Calabria reflected. “Like, it was – I really struggled to continue playing soccer at such a disadvantage, you know? And I think by pushing through that, that’s one of the reasons that I’ve been really well prepared to play this sport at a high level, because it was such a challenge.”

And it’s clear to see that the determination that fuels him on the pitch has sustained him off of it as well. Now, he’s found his calling, and nothing could get him to turn away.

“I think that this is the project for me where I’m starting to see some of the kids that have come up on our program and are getting involved in the national team and starting their own regional teams with families – it’s like, it’s really happening,” he said. “The growth of the sport is happening. And I have no doubt it will continue in a positive direction.”

The Revolution captain did even allow himself a moment of indulgence, and honesty, in dreaming about the future of his sport.

“And just for selfish reasons, I’d love to see it happen fast,” he said. “One, to just enjoy the benefits of playing with more people and at a higher level with folks who have more experience playing, more competition to make national teams and regional teams, etc. But I also kind of recognize that it’s not going to happen overnight, and I’ll be immensely happy whenever it does happen. And I know that I’ll be a part of the continued growth of the organization, both in New England and nationally, for the rest of my life.”

So, as was the case this year, Nico Calabria will not lift every U.S. Amputee Cup that will ever be won. But because there is a Cup to lift, because limb-different kids will have something to aspire to that he didn’t have, because amputee athletes have the opportunity to compete at the highest level, the New England captain can take pride in the work he’s done, and all that is still to come.