Liniak is co-founder of Sports Plus, a Montgomery County-based nonprofit that offers year-round sports and development programs for children and young adults with autism, attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder and other developmental disabilities. April is Autism Awareness Month, and Liniak’s organization recently took home the county’s 2012 Nancy Dworkin Award for Outstanding Service to Youth.
What inspired you to start Sports Plus?
What was happening was — my wife and I were involved in sports our entire lives… And my younger guy – he’s 3 years old and he can play with anyone in the county. But my other guy has autism. So here’s a kid who really wants to move around, who really needs the physical exercise, but who lacks some of the social skills to carry it out in a typical program.
How do the programs work?
What you see is remarkable because the programs are able to awaken and then harness some of the potential these kids have. So what had been a social wall and a barrier between them and another kid now is a potential social bridge because, at a base level, they might be able to play with a kid next door or enter a mainstream gym class or, on an even higher level, they might be able to join their school swim team.
You do more than sports, right?
We try to take what we do with sports and think, “What can we learn here for, say, when math is hard? Skills that they can keep that turn into an academic situation or a real-life situation … ?” Basically, we try to teach how [a job] works but also develop skills and interests. I would call it work assessment training.
How’d it feel to take home the award?
It’s very satisfying because, again, it’s an obvious a passion of ours because our son has autism. You know, if I could cure autism I’d be working on that but I don’t really know how to do that.
– Courtney Zott
