H.S. FOOTBALL: Scituate's Cadres won't let cerebral palsy keep him from the sport he loves

SCITUATE — In the fall, football players across the nation and at every level honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month with pink gear.

When the high school football season was postponed to February-April in Massachusetts, Scituate football team statistician Ryan Cadres saw an opportunity to highlight another worthy cause — cerebral palsy.

Cadres has been a part of Massachusetts high school football since 1991. He got his start when he was an eighth grader as the statistician for Whitman-Hanson Regional High School. He continued his career as a volunteer statistician and eventually an assistant coach at Pembroke and Cardinal Spellman.

Although Cadres has held many roles throughout his football career, he could never play the game since he has cerebral palsy. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, cerebral palsy "is a group of disorders that affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture."

"The two things that people notice right off the bat is my limp that I have on my right leg, which I like to call swag; and then my hand kind of floats, like my wrist is always bent," Cadres said.

Cadres's hometown team, Whitman-Hanson, was a powerhouse in the 1990s, winning 13 straight league titles, Cadres said. And for him, his disability was not going to keep him from the sport or the team that intrigued him so much.

It was only a few years ago on social media that Cadres learned March was Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month. When his 7-year-old son, Owen, started asking Cadres questions about his disability and when he heard someone had made a comment about his limp at a game, he thought this year would be a good time to shed more light on his disability.

"I want my kids and people to realize everyone's different," Cadres said. "People with disabilities want to be included. And that's how it started, I wasn't able to play a game but I found a way to stay involved and be included."

He decided to post everyday on his Facebook about his own experience with cerebral palsy and asked his friends and social media followers to wear green on March 25, which is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day. Damien's Pub in Hanson donated four gift certificates to Cadres to give to those on social media who posted pictures of themselves in green.

He decided to take his efforts one step further and had T-shirts made by his friend Dan Biggins from Magoun-Biggins Funeral Home to give to his team at Scituate and his old team at Whitman-Hanson to wear this past weekend at their games.

Cadres also said his the instructors and students at his son's dojo, Tama Dojo in Whitman, have also been wearing green and spreading awareness about cerebral palsy.

Even though Cadres started these efforts, he is quick to refocus the attention from himself. His main goal is to inform others of cerebral palsy, and ultimately raise awareness about other disabilities as well.

"I'm no one special," said Cadres. "I'm just trying to make people aware so that the next time they see me they don't have to be like, 'Oh look at that guy, well I wonder what's wrong with him,' or not even me but someone else with a different disability."

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: H.S. FOOTBALL: Scituate's Cadres won't let cerebral palsy keep him from the sport he loves

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