Jacob Crumbley was sitting at the table in his parents’ home in Fortson in Harris County, reading bios of the players on U.S. Cerebral Palsy men’s soccer team.
Crumbley was 17 years old. He didn’t know there was a CP team. He didn’t know he had CP. As he read about the players, he began to realize why his parents had mentioned there may be an opportunity to do something unique.
Crumbley looked up from the laptop screen and yelled toward his parents, “So, what do I have?”
That’s when Crumbley learned that he had CP and a chance to play for the U.S. Finding out why the left side of his body wasn’t as developed as his right changed nothing.
“It doesn’t affect me in any way, really, right?” he said. “I guess it was also the fact that they’ve made me learn how to do stuff myself. I can figure out how to do anything if you give me a couple minutes, even if my left side slow me down.”
Crumbley made the team in 2018 and after a few years has developed into one of its best players. He will be honored on Wednesday as the U.S. CP Player of the Year, one of eight honorees from the U.S. Extended National Teams.
Other winners were Hannah Adler as Female Beach Soccer Player of the Year, Antonio Chavez as Male Beach Soccer Player of the Year, Luciano Gonzalez as Male Futsal Player of the Year (hardcourt indoor soccer), Cassidy Leake as Female Cerebral Palsy Player of the Year, Sydney Andrews as Female Deaf Player of the Year, Kevin Fitzpatrick as Male Deaf Player of the Year, and Riley Johnson as Power Soccer Player of the Year (powerchairs soccer).
Crumbley earned the honor by playing forward, central midfielder, fullback and goalkeeper last year in his team’s eight matches, which included a seventh-place finish at the World Cup. He scored five goals and produced three assists, which tied him for the team lead in each category. Crumbley has 24 caps and eight goals since joining.
“It’s just a great honor to be recognized like that for all the hard work that I’ve put in over the years,” Crumbley said. “I couldn’t have done it without Stuart (Sharp) and the rest of the coaching staff, and then the rest of the team being around me for so long.”
The honor is another in a chain of odd coincidences that can make up life.
Crumbley’s parents have known about his CP since he was a young child. He wasn’t hitting growth and develop milestones at a normal pace.
They received the diagnoses at Scottish Rite Hospital and began putting Jacob in different programs to aid his development. By the fifth grade, his therapist called to tell his parents that she couldn’t justify working with him anymore because he was doing anything asked of him.
Rachel Crumbley, his mom, gave Jacob a loving direction: “Do what your older brother does. I didn’t want to limit him.”
Crumbley’s brother hunted. So Crumbley hunted. Still does. Crumbley’s older brother played soccer. So he played soccer. Crumbley played football. He was one of the best placekickers in the country. But his high school team typically went for it on fourth down, so Crumbley didn’t get a chance to show why he performed so well in camps. He stopped playing during high school.
Then came another coincidence.
During high school is when Crumbley was first exposed to someone else who had CP.
A group of boys he knew began to make fun of a girl who was having trouble speaking during a meeting. Crumbley shut them down, he said. After the meeting, the girl thanked him and said no one had done that for her before, according to his mom.
“I’m not even sure he knew he had CP at the time — but she had become a friend,” Rachel Crumbley wrote.
And then came videos of the CP team that Crumbley was asked by his parents to watch. That happened in the yellow dining room of his parents’ kitchen. His dad had watched videos of the U.S. men’s and women’s team. The algorithm suggested videos of the CP team.
“I knew there would come a time when we’d need to share Jacob’s diagnosis with him, but we had no idea how to approach that conversation,” his mother wrote in an email. “Learning about this team gave us the perfect opportunity — it felt like we were able to tell him, but the message was wrapped in a red, white, and blue bow.”
Crumbley made the team after a tryout in Chula Vista, California, which was his first flight, and over the years worked his way into the team’s starting lineup. He has performed well enough that he is a part of the U.S. Soccer Federation’s residency program, meaning playing the sport is his job. He lives in Woodstock during the week. He trains with some of his teammates at Atlanta United’s training facility in Marietta. He usually goes home on the weekends. Next year, all of the federation’s 27 teams will move into the Arthur M. Blank. U.S. Soccer National Training Center in Fayette County.
“Being able to keep our bodies healthy from banging around on the turf all the time is going to be help me play a lot longer,” he said. “It’s going to be awesome to see the growth that it brings to soccer and state.”
Credit: Tim Berridge / U.S. Soccer
Credit: Tim Berridge / U.S. Soccer
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