SAN JOSE -- After a recent spring football practice, San Jose State Coach Ron Caragher gathered his team around and told them about a special group of youngsters who would be coming to Spartan Stadium to hang out for a morning with any interested players.
Quarterback Joe Gray couldn't wait to volunteer.
"I took a quick shower and then signed up my name -- and the names of the other three quarterbacks," Gray said. "I joked that they had no choice."
On Saturday, the school is hosting the annual Field Day youth event, where any young fan can meet Spartan athletes in different sports. But a group of 30 kids diagnosed with autism will be getting the red-carpet treatment as part of an innovative collaboration between Caragher's team, the school's Communicative Disorders and Sciences Department and the Autism Tree Project Foundation.
The grass-roots program has caught on among SJSU football players and strikes especially close to home for Gray, whose 6-year-old niece is autistic.
"These kids need to realize that they are important, will never be left behind and always will have equal opportunities," said Gray, a Los Angeles native. "I want to show them that people are there for them."
Matching players as mentors for autistic children is something Caragher and his wife, Wendy, started at the University of San Diego. And when the Bellarmine College Prep graduate came home to take the Spartans job in late 2012, Caragher brought along the idea. What's different here is that SJSU students who might one day have careers working with special-needs children also play a role -- gaining real-world insight into the often maddening and still poorly understood realm of autism.
Most of all, kids just get to be kids as they experience things that their parents sometimes never dreamed possible.
"This is such a win-win program," said Jean Novak, a SJSU professor and speech pathologist. "Somehow, there's a bond that forms between these little kids with autism and these huge football players. It really changes all of their lives."
Laura Bonafede Odom's 11-year-old daughters Jessica and Taylor -- who are part of triplets -- have autism. They have attended football games through the program and even had two players, Rob Fiscalini and Jarrod Lawson, over for dinner and to play board games.
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A wonderful match: Big San Jose State football players, small children with autism