Dream Come True: The Autistic Student Manager That Inspired a High School
“Matty Cools,” a New Jersey high school basketball team’s autistic student manager, hit a shot that nobody will ever forget.
Doug Hood / APP
It was only a layup, worth the same two points as any other shot, but if you asked anybody in the gym at New Jersey’s Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School on February 5 just how much Matt Newman’s layup was worth, they all would have answered the same way: you can’t measure the value of a shot like that.
It was Senior Day, and the starting lineup had been reshuffled to include Newman, better known by his nickname “Matty Cools” (“We [already] had a kid on the team called Matty Ice,” explained Coach Chris Champeau to the Asbury Park Press. “So I said, ‘We have a Matty Ice, but you’re cooler. You’re Matty Cools.’”). Cools had never started before, but he had been an unmistakable presence at Bulldog basketball games for the previous four years. An autistic student, Newman was in the stands watching a game with his father years prior when he was an eighth grader. After the win, Champeau noticed Newman in the stands and invited him into the locker room to celebrate with the team. When Newman came out a while later, he found his dad. “Hey,” Newman said, “I’m the basketball manager at RFH for the next four years.”
He has done that and more. Champeau turns over the beginning of every practice to his manager, and Newman takes the opportunity to let his personality shine. Some days, he runs the team through fake starting lineup announcements, complete with a microphone and pump-up music. Other days, he emcees a trivia contest where a wrong answer means you must run sprints. “It’s pure love and energy,” Champeau told the Two River Times. “He loves it so much and it’s contagious. It takes 20 minutes! But it’s the best 20 minutes of my day.”
The basketball team embraced their manager, inviting him to after-practice meals and treating him like a celebrity in the school halls. “He has just flourished,” his mom, Mary, said earlier this month. Or there is the way that Coach Champeau described the impact of Matty Cools: “People in the beginning were like, ‘That’s so nice what you guys do for him.’ But in reality, what he does for us is tenfold.”
All season long, Champeau and Newman talked about Senior Day. That would be the night that Matty Cools finally took the court—and hopefully the moment that he would score an official basket. Teammates helped him practice his shot. For months, he prepared. “Basketball has given us a platform for someone like Cools to really develop in his life—and at the same time, he’s not the only kid who’s developing,” Champeau said. On the day of the game, Champeau had Newman give the team’s pregame speech. “We need to shut them down!” he said to his teammates surrounding him. “Attitude on 3! 1-2-3…”
Attitude!
He took the court, wearing number 99. The Bulldogs’ opponent won the tip-off, and an opposing guard named Drew Pollock dribbled when Newman ran up to him and stole the ball. “Growing up, a lot of people dream of playing varsity basketball and hitting a shot,” Pollock said after the game. “I’ve been able to do that. But if I can help make someone else’s dream come true, to me that’s just as rewarding.”
Newman ran down the court, launching a shot. It fell short—but another Bulldog grabbed the rebound and gave Newman another try. This one fell in. The Bulldogs mobbed Newman on the court, and the whole gym cheered his name: Mat-ty! Mat-ty! Mat-ty! Soon, he was hoisted on a teammate’s shoulders and paraded around the gym. Newman smiled about as big as anyone ever has.
“They picked me up like I scored 85 points in a row!” Newman said after the game.
Next year, Matty Cools will head to nearby Brookdale Community College where he’ll join the cross-country team. Brookdale might think they’re getting just another athlete. But “Matty Cools” is so much more than that.
“Over the past four years,” said Champeau, “I’ve had 100 basketball players go through the program — and every one of them is a better person because Matty was there.”
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