Sponsor Noah and help stoke passion
ABOY was diagnosed with a life-changing disease after he “kept falling over” as a toddler .
Noah Cunningham, from Southport, was just two years old when he was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Mum Vicki, 45, said she knew there was something wrong when his legs would give way from underneath him.
She said: “The way he walked was slightly different to other people. He could never get up off the floor. He used to fall over but he wouldn’t just fall over, his legs would give way and he would just drop to the floor.
“Then he could never get back up so he would have to crawl to something and use the table or the couch to get back up again. That was the first sign that he was different to other toddlers.”
Noah is now 17 and has a strong passion for wheelchair football, spending a weekend every few months playing for his team, the North West Bees, in Nottingham.
On top of the distance travelled on match weekends, there are also trips to training in Bolton and Oldham, as well as the cost of buying gear and funding the hobby for Noah.
The family are now raising money through paid sponsorships.
Vicki said: “Noah plays wheelchair football and trains a couple of times a week over in Bolton, and trains once a week in Liverpool, there’s nothing really local for wheelchair football so that’s a bit of a trek three times a week.
“Then his sports chair was £6,000 which was funded by the Variety Club which is amazing because if they hadn’t have paid for that we would be looking at funding that ourselves. Then you have all the repairs on it like the wheels and as Noah deteriorates all the time we have to change things on it.
“At the moment we’re looking at changing the head support and different things like that which are all really costly. Then, when they play their matches, because they’re in the National League, all their matches are in Nottingham over a weekend.
“We go roughly every three months and the whole of the championship goes. The fixtures are laid out over the Saturday and Sunday so we have to book a hotel and stay over, or Noah and his carer, whoever is with him that weekend.
“As you can imagine it’s really costly. I’m on my own so Noah decided it might be a good idea to ask people if they will sponsor him and advertise on his chair which would help him continue to play and fund it himself.
“That’s where we’re up to. We have two people doing £50 a month regularly and we’ve had donations.”
Noah, a massive Evertonian, has his life built around his football training and tournaments.
Vicki said: “It’s everything. It’s his life. If he didn’t have that he wouldn’t have anything. He’s a really positive person, he likes to read, he loves history and politics so he reads all the books on things like that but there’s no activities that Noah can join in with.
“There isn’t anything in the area. He attends Claire House Hospice which is his hospice and he has a group there who meet once a month where they play games.
“Every six months he goes into Claire House and spends the weekends there with the lads but other than that he only has his carers to do stuff with so if he didn’t have football he wouldn’t have anything – other than watching Everton that is.”