He's a one-hit wonder: Autistic Huskies football player, fans relish Weafer's single-play appearances

“All right, Kyle!” a cheerleader screams.

Up in the home seats on the west side of the Blue Valley District Activities Complex in Overland Park, a group of Blue Valley Northwest High School football moms stand and shriek their approval, as if Paul McCartney is about to enter stage right.

Flanked by a teammate, as is by now the custom, and with 6:23 remaining in the fourth quarter in Northwest’s 34-0 Class 6A District 2 victory over Shawnee Mission South, the Huskies’ No. 88, senior defensive tackle Kyle Weafer, bolts onto the field.

Bearing an athlete’s joy, Kyle leaves his autism on the sideline – hey, it will still be there when he gets back – and zips out onto the gridiron to help his teammates shore up this latest victory, which will mark No. 100 in the school’s 16-year history.

On this night, the Overland Park resident would nearly double his season output, hanging in for a season-best two plays.

* * * *

Oh, what a season it has been.

For Kyle, who had never so much as competed in organized football until this year. And for these Huskies, who are a touch-’em-and-jump 7-1 entering Friday’s 7 p.m. district finale with Blue Valley North at the BVDAC.

A win there, and the Huskies would nail down the district crown at 3-0.

It is a fact made more amazing when considering that one very short – and very long – season ago, Blue Valley Northwest opened its 2008 campaign with an 0-7 record before rebounding with a pair of district victories good for district runner-up status.

Then in their 6A regional playoff game, they upset previously unbeaten SM West, the co-champions of the Sunflower League, before falling to Blue Valley in the state’s sectional round.

Now, with visions of a state title in their minds and destiny is in their own hands, for these Huskies, life is good.

* * * *

Kyle Weafer had a pretty good life prior to the 2009 high school football season.

His family had moved to Overland Park from California in 1995 in pursuit of the Blue Valley School District and its reputation as a place that could provide a top-notch education for their autistic son.

Interestingly, Kyle had never shown any particular interest in playing football until this past high school off-season.

“Then in January of this year, Kyle looked at me and said, ‘I play football,’” according to his father, Bob.

Kyle had always been a huge sports fan. But any notions of his trying to take that love to the school football level still represented much more than a baby step.

Bob was torn. He and wife Lisa, who teaches special needs pre-schoolers at Timber Creek Elementary in the Blue Valley School District, wanted to be the good parents. They wanted to help their son live out his newly verbalized dream, but they also had a foot in reality.

Their son’s autism brought with it the nuances. And oh, did Kyle have his nuances.

For 12 months, 365 days a year, the boy wore a T-shirt, shorts and flip flops.

Never mind the fact that it might be cold enough to film a Sears DieHard Battery commercial outside.

And purple. Had to be purple. Good thing the kid loves Kansas State University athletics and the Baltimore Ravens so much.

For those whose understanding of autism begins and ends with the Dustin Hoffman character in the 1988 movie, “Rain Man,” remember the scene in the film when Raymond Babbitt threw a fit at the prospect of flying any airline other than Qantas Airways?

Well, the Weafers endured a similar experience with Kyle once, only with one huge, glaring difference.

“We were kicked off a United Airlines flight,” Bob said.

The Weafer family had not taken vacations in the summer for years due to Kyle’s passion for his job as the “pool king” of his neighborhood pool.

As Bob put it, while working with the pool’s lifeguards every day for 11 hours over a 10-summer stretch, he had “never missed a day at the pool and would never miss a day until he had locked the gate later that evening.”

Kyle’s rigid pool schedule was in no way conducive to Blue Valley Northwest summer football workouts.

Something had to give.

And shoes. No one can ever recall a football player in flipflops, but Kyle wanted no part of football cleats.

Could pose a problem.

At least one of the Huskies team colors is purple. Whew. Dodged that bullet.

By now, though, the Weafers, whose family also includes 21-year-old daughter, Kelly, who graduated from Blue Valley Northwest in 2007 and is a junior in the University of Kansas nursing school, have learned a thing or two about viewing Kyle’s challenges sunny side up.

“I had gone to a doctor in California who said Kyle would never say more than two words,” Lisa recalled.

“I said, ‘Thank you, but as a parent, I have to prove you wrong.’ Early is the key. You have to get the kids into the right program.”

* * * *

Indeed, the right program.

Bob Weafer did what Dad does. He approached – gingerly – Blue Valley Northwest football coach Mike Zegunis in January about the prospect of his son somehow joining the Huskies program this season.

What he could not have expected were the open arms that awaited in the person of the fifth-year Huskies coach.

“I said, ‘Anybody that wants to play football has a soft spot in my heart,’” Zegunis recalled last week.

“I love the game, and I love coaching it. And anybody that wants to, I want them to be able to have that experience.”

Still, Zegunis had his ground rules. Kyle would have to forsake his pool gig when Huskies summer workouts rolled around.

At first, the coach had only asked for a one-day-a-week weight training commitment from his new player.

But Kyle showed up. And showed up. And showed up.

By the summer’s end, this once-pudgy kid looked like a football player. He had dropped 37 pounds from his frame and added muscle.

He proved to be one of only four Huskies players to participate in every summer weights session.

The hopeful’s athleticism threw Zegunis for a loop.

“We played catch,” the coach said. “He has good hands and he throws it. He has better hands than the majority of the kids on our team, and he throws the football probably as well as anybody that is not a quarterback on the team.”

Grab a helmet, No. 88.

“I think he’s come a long ways, and I think football’s helped him come a long ways,” Zegunis said. “In talking to his dad (in the off-season), Dad didn’t even think he was going to put tennis shoes on.

“It almost brings tears to your eyes. I still remember the practice Kyle came out to during the off-season wearing cleats that Dad had purchased. Dad would kind of stand back in the distance and watch. Dad was so proud that his son was out there with cleats on.”

Bob Weafer knows that for his only son, in many ways the future is now.

Or as he put it: “This is Kyle’s senior year in high school. This is a boy who will never go to college, never drive a car, and probably never marry and have a family of his own.

“This football season is the highlight of his life, and I just want it to slow down so he can enjoy every single moment he has.”

* * * *

Zegunis would like for the reporter to meet Kyle at practice one day this past week. Good enough.

Rain pours on the BVDAC turf. In the moments before practice commences, the team clusters under cover in the entryway to the team’s locker room.

A boy wearing No. 54, not 88, approaches with a broad smile, kind demeanor and firm handshake.

“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he asks pleasantly, sounding every bit the student council president, or at least his team’s social butterfly and spokesman.

Over the course of nearly 20 years in sportswriting, I have often asked myself the very same question.

Only a moment later, after he disappears into the locker room with his teammates, does the realization hit.

You have just shaken the hand of one Kyle Weafer.

* * * *

On with the interview, inside the team’s locker room.

Reporter: “Have you enjoyed being on this team?”

Kyle: “I didn’t have any experience, but I’ve been working hard. I’ve been excellent lately.”

Reporter: “The Huskies are playing so well …”

Kyle: “We’re 6-1. Hoping we win state. Don’t be lazy.”

* * * *

Zegunis smiles. And understands.

“There are times that I really think I’m getting to Kyle, that he’s understanding my sense of humor,” the coach said, smiling. “And then I’ll find out that, no, he’s not.

“I’ll think he’s following along. And then, just as I think he’s really following along with my conversation, he’ll bust out with something like, ‘Stay low.’ He’ll say some responses that he knows I want to hear, football responses. Or he’ll say, ‘I like you.’”

Such is Zegunis’ love for Kyle that he recently has nominated No. 88 for the national “Rudy Awards,” named for Rudy Ruettiger, the famed Notre Dame practice player stalwart who eventually did make his way into a Fighting Irish contest.

There exist a myriad of reasons why Zegunis will never forget Kyle. The following is only one of them:

“He wanted a hug the other day,” Zegunis reported.

“I saw him in the hallway. I always see him first thing in the morning, and he’s always so excited to see me.

“And normally, it’s a fist bump. But he wanted a hug. So I gave him a hug. He hugs me, and he goes, ‘You’re wearing cologne.’ Just like that. And I was like, ‘Yeah, Kyle, I am wearing cologne.’

“He will say stuff that a little kid will say, and it is endearing. Your heart goes out to him. He’ll say things that kids don’t ordinarily say. How many high school football players want to give you a hug?

“Not too many.”

* * * *

Clearly the 5-11, 215-pound Weafer, the kid tucked inside Size 15 – yes, cleats, thank you – is not the only one in the Northwest camp receiving something positive out of his interaction with his teammates.

Kyle’s Huskies mates will line up to tell you that their friend pretty much has been to inspiration this season what Spectacular Bid was to horse racing. Everyone has benefitted, others perhaps even more so than No. 88 himself.

Senior teammate Alex Schultz was sufficiently moved by Kyle to write a story for the school newspaper on the subject of his new teammate.

“Against Blue Valley, one of our big rivals, we were blowing them out, and the crowd started chanting Kyle’s name,” Huskies senior center Tim Brockman remembered.

“You knew Kyle was excited. I think he was in on the tackle. He came out yelling, ‘I got a tackle!’ That’s one of my favorite memories, just seeing his face light up.”

Blue Valley Northwest special education teacher Michele Boeding, one of Kyle’s instructors during the school day, noted that his football experience will help Kyle’s overall development “not just from the coaches’ instructions, but peer modeling,” she said.

“Watching the guys and what they are doing and listening to how the guys question the coaches in appropriate tones and things like that. Those are the things that Kyle is going to take away.”

“It is a blessing,” Huskies senior quarterback Koby Chadick said, “to see him every day. Because even when you are down and you’ve got a bad attitude, he always comes to practice with a good attitude. He’s always high spirited. Just to see him makes us happier, makes us want to be here.”

Any thoughts of Weafer’s presence becoming a sort of sideshow to what this team hopes to accomplish quickly melted away, and for good reason.

“The way he comes to practice and the way he works, it’s not a sideshow at all,” Chadick said. “He works just as hard as anyone on the team.”

Chadick admitted that Kyle has taken his QB’s field vision to a whole new level.

“I don’t know many people with autism,” Chadick said. “But it definitely doesn’t get the best of him. He takes full advantage of what he’s got.”

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