When Auburn University graduate student Zach Dickey lands in Sydney, Australia, next weekend, he will be the newest of four of his family members on the U.S. Powerchair Soccer National Team.
In his childhood days in Indiana, Dickey was a face-painted kid in the stands cheering on his brother, sister and his father, Tom – one of their coaches. Now, they will take the court together for the Powerchair Soccer World Cup, starting next Saturday, Oct. 14.
From the stands, he saw his brother, Jordan, and sister-in-law, Natalie, win World Cups, and now it's Dickey's turn to be cheered on at 24-years-old. Dickey has been playing powerchair soccer since he was 10-years-old, and this is undoubtedly the biggest stage he's ever played on.
"It's just a super cool experience where everything kind of lined up perfectly," Dickey said. "I don't think many families ever get to experience everybody being at the top of their game all at the same time and being able to do something like this."
Dickey will be going to play with the U.S. logo on his chest for the first time. Over his five years at Auburn, he's become accustomed to representing orange and blue in Beard-Eaves Coliseum in front of the Auburn family.
Now a graduate assistant to head coach Robb Taylor and the wheelchair basketball team, Dickey originally came to Auburn to play wheelchair basketball. But as his disability progressed, he lost the ability to play basketball and began going to Atlanta to play powerchair soccer, which plays four-on-four soccer on a basketball court with motorized wheelchairs – different from a manual chair used in wheelchair basketball.
"I came here thinking I was going to be a student-athlete that played basketball, graduated in four years and got the hell out and went and did big boy work," Dickey said. "But you know, the experience working under Robb Taylor – who's like, probably one of the best coaches in wheelchair basketball, probably in history – I fell in love with [the coaching] side of things. As my disease progressed, it was either don't be involved or switch over to the coaching side."
Dickey has not only become a coach for the wheelchair basketball team, but he and Taylor have started the first ever collegiate powerchair soccer team at Auburn.
Dickey's vision, however, is just getting started with the launch of the team. Right now, the team only consists of Dickey and several guys on the wheelchair basketball team, but Dickey said there have already been two prospective powerchair soccer players from other states visit Auburn to inquire about the program.
"We're looking at landing a lot of really good, top recruits," Dickey said. "There's a lot of kids at the college age who are looking for a place to play, and it seems like a lot of them are considering, 'Do I need to stop playing during college? I can focus on school because there's nowhere I can get that kind of environment.' And so when they found out about this, they've been super excited... Eventually, you land some of these top recruits, and we have enough bodies where I can take a step back and just coach. That's the dream."
Before powerchair soccer starts on the Plains, Dickey will try to reestablish the United States' dominance in the sport. The U.S. won the first two FIFPA World Cups in 2007 and 2011, but it placed as runners up in the most recent World Cup in 2017. The COVID-19 pandemic postponed the most recent games, until now.
It has been a long time waiting for the U.S. and for Dickey, who could only sit and watch when his brother won the World Cup 12 years ago. He doesn't know if the significance of playing for the U.S. will hit him when he lands in Australia, enters the locker room, or hears the National Anthem before the game, but he knows he'll be ready.
"In scrimmages, [the score] is like 0-0 or 1-0, and you're like, 'I'm ready to play. I'm ready to let this all out,'" Dickey said. "It's so much built-up energy and like – fuel. I'm ready to let it out on some other poor country... I want to show the world how we play."
Dickey will represent Auburn in the Red, White and Blue starting in a match against Australia on Oct. 14 at 9 p.m. CST, and the 10-team tournament will run through the championship on Oct. 20 at 5 a.m. The full schedule of the tournament can be found at U.S. Soccer's website, and all matches can be streamed through FIFPA's Youtube channels.
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