Young footballer Con Christodoulou is a man on a mission, and that mission is to win gold for Victoria at the 2019 National Cerebral Palsy State Championships kicking off on Wednesday 2 October in Sydney.
The Victorian team is one of six state representative teams that will be competing for the national title at Valentine Sports Park, with each team playing the other five teams in a round robin and the top two playing off in the Grand Final on Sunday for the Gold Medal. They are a representative team for footballers with Cerebral Palsy, brain acquired injury or stroke related symptoms.
Christodoulou’s journey has been a remarkable one of determination and commitment. He suffered a stroke in 2015.
“As it happened, I couldn’t feel the whole left side of my body and I couldn’t speak no matter how much I tried. It was such a traumatising experience thinking that I would never be able to recover to how I was prior to the stroke,” the young central defender explained on his Facebook Page.
“With hard work and commitment to rehabilitation, I re-trained myself to learn how to walk, talk and most importantly, how to play the sport I love.
“After 15 months of rehab, I committed myself to join the Victorian Paralympic Soccer Team. I was concerned thinking that I will not fit in with the team but I did easily and it was the best choice I ever made. This is not just a team filled with players and coaches, but it is a family.”
For Christodoulou, the upcoming tournament will be his fourth National Championships at which he has represented Victoria. In the last three tournaments, the Victorians made it all the way to the Grand Final play-off match only for the gold to prove elusive. So with three silver medals in his collection, Christodoulou along with team mates Christian Tsangas (goal keeper) and Christian Bitsikas (winger) are determined to land the gold this year.
“Every year I say, hopefully we can win gold. But this time, I’m just certain, like, we have to. We just have to. We’ve been coming second three times in a row. It’s just that last thing that we need. We need to win gold. That’s really important for us. It will make a big impact on our team. We’ve got a lot of young players this year,” Christodoulou told Neos Kosmos in the lead up to the tournament.
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As well as competing for the national title, the tournament will also give Christodoulou, Tsangas and Bitsikas the opportunity to showcase their talents in front of scouts and coaches for the national Pararoos team.
Christodoulou already has one Pararoos cap to his credit, earned in a friendly against the USA in 2018. This year he was also invited to attend the Pararoos training camp, as they prepared for the World Cup in Spain, but was unable to attend because of a family holiday to Cyprus from which he returned just over a month ago and has since been working hard to regain match fitness.
Next year, Christodoulou will commence a four year Sports Science degree at Deakin University, and although he’s unsure about his long-term football plans, he intends to continue to participate in the Victorian Paralympic Football Program.
“I still want to stay fit, which will be beneficial for my course.”
The Victorian team has a GoFund Me page. Anyone interested in supporting the team can do so by visiting https://www.gofundme.com/f/viccpteam-nationals2019