Pathways Kids Learn Touchdown Dance [VIDEO]

A dozen children and young adults with disabilities took part in a new five-week football program held at this fall that paired them with high school student buddies, mostly members of the football team.

They studied the difference between offense and defense.

They stretched and ran the 20-yard dash.

They practiced passing, punting and receiving, all under the direction of Gerry Gallagher, a high school physical education teacher and former college and high school football coach who retired as Montville's head coach last year.

Gallagher teamed up this fall with Pathways for Exceptional Children to start a football program that paired high school athletes with children who have disabilities.

Gallagher said he loves football and saw Pathways Pigskin as a chance to bring football to a new group of kids.

During practice Sunday morning, the last session of their season, Gallager conducted the drills with seriousness and intensity, right down to teaching students the art of the touchdown dance.

Such dances typically involve some combination of uninhibited wiggling, arms being raised triumphantly and war cries.

Celebrations were common during the Pathways Pigskin practice. There were dances for touchdowns, high-fives for field goals and hugs and cheers for any impressive effort put forth by the program's participants.

 "I've coached football from 1973, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart: the last five weeks have been as fulfulling to me as a football coach as anything I've ever done," Gallagher told participants and parents at the end of practice. "(Pathways founder Melinda Jennis') motto for Pathways is 'children teaching children.' It's not. It's children teaching adults like me the way we should act. So we all owe a special debt of a gratitutade to Melinda Jennis for all the work she does with the kids."

Gallagher's career includes head coaching stints at St. Francis College and William Paterson University.