At Team IMPACT, we hope every family and team in our program gets something unique out of the experience. Every match is different, every friendship is different, every experience is different. But if there is one thing we hope everyone at Team IMPACT experiences with their team, it’s fun; and fun is exactly what Maddy Harsfield feels every time she’s with her Harvard soccer teammates.
“Maddy is…just really a miracle,” Maddy’s mom, Wendy, said when asked about her 13-year-old daughter. Wendy and her husband, Scott, were already parents to two boys when they found out they were pregnant with Maddy. Born a month early with a hole in her lung that caused her to repeatedly stop breathing, Maddy spent the first two weeks of her life in the NICU. “It’s devastating to leave the hospital without your baby,” Wendy said. “Maddy just entered the world with a lot going on.”
Once Wendy and Scott were able to bring Maddy home, it wasn’t long before they began to notice some things Maddy did differently than her brothers when they were her same age. When Maddy was around five months old, her parents noticed she was only playing with her toys using her left hand. Wendy, who had been a special education teacher for years before Maddy was born, knew her daughter was too young to show right- or left-hand dominance and mentioned this quirk to Maddy’s doctors at their next appointment. They ran a bunch of tests and referred the Harsfields to a neurologist. It took six months for the family to get an appointment with the neurologist, but in the meantime, Maddy began occupational and physical therapy to strengthen her right arm.
Finally, Maddy was able to see a neurologist. When she was 11 months old, doctors told Maddy’s family that she needed an MRI of her brain. The Harsfields weren’t sure why doctors wanted to perform an MRI, but after three hours of scans, doctors discovered that Maddy had suffered a stroke in utero.
“On paper, she has cerebral palsy,” Wendy said. “They call it congenital hemiplegia because one part of her body is partially paralyzed.” At the time of her diagnosis, Maddy’s older brothers were five and three years old. Twice a week for years, Wendy dropped the boys off at school and took Maddy to Boston Children’s Hospital for hours of therapies and appointments. Later in her life, Maddy had to get injections in her hand and arm and began a clinical trials for a robotic arm. Maddy’s presentation of cerebral palsy looked different to many other kids with the same diagnosis, so she often struggled to understand why she needed to go to the doctor so often, receive so many different treatments and therapies, and have all these appointments other kids she knew didn’t.
“Maddy and I together have been on this journey for a really long time,” Wendy said, “and we have always treated her as if she can do anything anybody else can. Even though it took her longer to learn how to walk, it took her longer to crawl, it takes her longer to do some things, she is just like everybody else. But because of all those things, she has just developed into this really kind, empathetic person who will try anything and do anything.”
When another mom whose child is matched through Team IMPACT told Wendy about the program, Wendy knew Maddy would love to give it a try, just as she does with every new opportunity. “Anytime I can have my daughter have some role models, especially older girls since she has older brothers, she loves that,” Wendy recalled, “so I signed up and pretty shortly afterwards we were matched with Harvard women’s soccer.” It was March of 2023, right before school break for the soccer team and right before Maddy left on a family vacation to the Bahamas. “We immediately started getting videos from the girls,” Wendy recalled. Soon enough, they met in person.
Wendy recalled one of the first times Maddy got together with her teammates. “They went to Harvard Square, got ice cream, and walked around campus,” she said. Wendy remembered Maddy laughing as her teammates told her about some of Harvard’s silliest traditions and tips on how to spot a tourist on campus. Maddy began going to games and practices, and soon enough got her own locker and jersey on her Signing Day. When Harvard played at Brown in last season’s Ivy League conference championship game, Maddy attended the game with some of her friends from school. “She doesn’t like to call attention to the fact that she has all this stuff, but at the same time she loves to share this with her friends,” Wendy said. When Harvard won the game, Maddy ran out on the field to celebrate with her teammates. “For her birthday, they gave her a signed ball from that game,” Wendy said. “She doesn’t like to talk about it too much with her friends, but they all think it’s pretty cool to get to know the Harvard soccer team, get to go to Harvard, and get to hang out with them.”
Maddy recently celebrated her bat mitzvah, and for her service project she made inspirational friendship bracelets and delivered them to kids at Boston Children’s Hospital. She went to campus for a bracelet-making locker room pizza party with her teammates, spending the day laughing and dancing together. The day after her Signing Day, she attended Harvard Athletics’ Media Day and made TikToks with the girls as they waited for their photoshoot. When she turned 13 earlier this year, she celebrated this milestone birthday with her teammates at a party they threw for her on campus. “The moments when she’s just hanging out with these cool older girls and it’s not about soccer, those moments are just as special as getting to go to their playoff games and running on the field with them after they win,” Wendy said.
This season, scheduling was a bit more difficult for the Harsfields and the team. Maddy wasn’t able to get to campus as often as she and her team would like; but one thing is consistent every time Maddy and her teammates are together: They are going to have fun. “I understand why parents might be hesitant [to sign their child up for Team IMPACT]. When you have a kid who has some extra needs, it’s just so much to manage. The doctors’ appointments, the therapy appointments, your other children. So if you add another thing, it can start to feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, I just can’t,’” Wendy said, “but Maddy just has so much fun doing this. Even if it is another thing to add to the schedule, it’s not stressful, it’s fun. She gets to feel special for something that’s made her have to work harder for everything for so long, so to get to see her get something good from having to go through all she’s been through, why not?”
Wendy said that her family’s time in Team IMPACT makes her think of Emily Perl Kingsley’s essay Welcome to Holland, about having a child with an illness or disability. The essay compares getting ready to have a baby to eagerly planning a trip to Italy, preparing to see all the sights, packing for the weather, anticipating all the food, and getting excited to see all Italy has to offer, only for that flight to Italy to unexpectedly land in Holland, changing the entire trip you had planned. “It can be easy for a special needs parent to get stuck in that ‘I was supposed to be in Italy’ mindset, so they miss out on opportunities like Team IMPACT,” Wendy said. “Yes, this can stink sometimes, but this is where we are, so let’s do everything we can to have fun with what we have.” And for Maddy, that fun can always be found with the Harvard women’s soccer team.
