It’s a sunny 99 degrees on a Tuesday afternoon in late July. An official Colorado Rapids team is warming up on field 22 of the Dick’s Sporting Goods Park soccer complex. The names on the back of their burgundy jerseys — Kratzer, Raines, Obernesser, Shumake, and Hirschhorn, among them —will be less familiar to Colorado soccer fans than the ones of the guys who practiced on the neighboring field that morning: Bassett, Navarro, Rosenberry, Steffen, Vines, and so on.

But on the front of both jerseys resides the UCHealth logo. A jersey sponsorship, you see, doesn’t stop where the Major League Soccer or MLS team ends.

The occasion is a “friendly,” or a practice match. The team in question is the Rapids Unified Team, and the opponent consists of two dozen Colorado Rapids employees — responsible for ticket sales, video production, community relations, fan engagement, graphic design, the website, and more. Many wear the New Day Kit, designed to boost mental-health awareness in the state in partnership with UCHealth.

Caitlin Kinser, the Rapids’ senior director of Community Impact and Events, has donned a referee’s zebra shirt for the occasion. She and Sydney Kohne, the similarly zebraed Rapids’ digital content coordinator, will officiate. They will do so barefoot, a testament to the living-room-carpet nature of the natural-grass pitch.

Kinser clarifies the rules to the Rapids staffers: two 20-minute halves as is practice for the MLS Special Olympics Unified Sports Soccer Exchange Program. And no slide tackling, please.

“Don’t feel like you need to go easy on them. They’re very athletic,” Kinser adds.

Focusing on successes

That becomes clear when the game starts. The Rapids Unified team practices twice a week in Thornton and includes 10 athletes with intellectual disabilities and seven “partners” who play on club and high school teams.

As the game proceeds, Molly Underly, a longtime Special Olympics volunteer coach and former University of Indianapolis goalkeeper, explains what Rapids Unified Team is about.

“It’s people with and without disabilities coming together to play soccer,” Underly says. “It’s about the sport, but it’s also much more than just about sport. It’s about the relationships and the mentoring and those things that we think about outside of soccer — what it means to be involved and have friends and care. And it’s about people celebrating you for all of your successes, as opposed to focusing on disabilities or areas of weakness.”

The Rapids United season involves a handful of formal games and friendlies like this one. The Rapids Unified Team played Real Salt Lake Unified in Salt Lake City in May, New York Red Bulls Unified at home and then the Colorado Springs Switchbacks away in July, and will head to FC Dallas for a game against that MLS team’s Unified squad on Aug. 31.

Losing a leg can’t keep him off the field

The most visually striking player on the field is one of the Rapids Unified team partners, Jordan Obernesser, 15. He had right-knee pain early in his fall 2022 freshman soccer season at Golden High School. It was bone cancer, and it required the amputation of his right leg above the knee that November. A rotationplasty limb salvage surgery at Children’s Hospital Colorado now lets him walk normally with a prosthetic, but he goes without and uses forearm crutches to play. And play he does – moves like a cat, and faster than many who enjoy unassisted bipedalism; seeks out spaces like an experienced central midfielder; and makes the right passes.

Jordan plays not only for the Rapids Unified Team, but also for the Colorado Rapids Amputee Team, and he recently became the youngest member of the U.S. Amputee Soccer Team. He’ll be back on the Golden High School boys team this fall, too, he says, before heading to Honduras with the national team in November for the Gold Cup. (For more on Jordan’s remarkable story, check out this video the Rapids put together for AppleTV.)

“This is kind of something to play for fun, and, I mean, I really enjoy it,” Jordan says, after subbing off for a breather. “And it’s kind of giving back to the Rapids, because they’ve been great through my journey.”

A shared victory

The back-and-forth game stands at 0-0 at the break but ignites in the second half. Three well-worked goals by the Rapids staff are countered by a long-range bomb by Rapids Unified partner Reed Wangerin, the ball rolling over the goal line after some close-in chaos and credited to athlete Katie Wagner, and partner Bryan Kratzer’s right-footed shot into the upper corner in the waning seconds of extra time. As Unified Sports rules dictate, there would now be a shootout.

Some suspiciously subpar goaltending on the part of the goalkeeper Marc Rodriguez, a Rapids inside sales representative, does influence the proceedings. But in the end, Rapids Unified player Jordan Hirschhorn sends Rodriguez the wrong way and decides the tie. Hirschhorn runs to the corner flag and executes a Christiano Ronaldo-style celebratory leap and finds himself swarmed by players in burgundy and blue.

After the staff and Rapids Unified players have dispersed from a group photo, Kinser describes the Rapids Unified program, now in its 12th year, as “I think the best thing we do as a club.” The name on the front of those jerseys matters, too, she adds.

“Whenever we’re representing the Rapids brand, we’re also representing UCHealth,” she says. “They’re one of the best partners we’ve ever had.”