LISBON – You just can’t slow him down.

Setting personal best after personal best for the Lisbon High School cross country team, 17-year-old junior Joel Burkhardt improves with each passing day. He has already lowered his time this season by nearly seven minutes, to 26:27.

After a recent race at Beaver Park in Lisbon, when asked whether or not running for the Greyhounds was hard, Joel smiled wide.

“No,” he said. “It’s actually pretty easy. None of it is hard.”

Within earshot, coach Hank Fuller wheeled around and nearly fell over.

“What? You think this is too easy,” Fuller said, again with a giant smile. “I guess I am going to have to make your workouts tougher, Joel, aren’t I?”

The fact that Joel finds anything easy is remarkable.

Like most high school athletes, Joel is highly regarded in the general school community, considered “one of the guys” by the rest of his teammates and pushed both in the classroom and in the throes of competition by a coach that cares.

Unlike most high school athletes, he has autism, a disorder that can be difficult to categorize and even more difficult to understand. On top of that, when he was born his umbilical cord became wrapped around his neck, cutting oxygen flow to the brain and causing a condition known as apraxia, a mild form of cerebral palsy.

Misconceptions

One of the more common misconceptions is that autism is a disease, when in fact it is a disorder.

“Diseases can be caught and spread,” said Joel’s mother, Jean, a registered nurse. “Disorders cannot. To label any child or any individual based on a disorder is unfair, especially since there is such a lack of knowledge out there about them, specifically about autism.”

In recent months stories have appeared in the media that indicate some children with autism or Asperger’s syndrome, a condition similar to autism, can become unruly or violent when provoked in a certain way.

In August, in a highly-publicized case out of Falmouth, a judge ruled that the school department was justified in asking a home-schooled child with Asperger’s syndrome not to return to the playground where he had previously been allowed to play pending a psychological assessment.

“The thing about autism, and even Asperger’s, is that so little is known about it,” said Jean. “Every child is different and every case is different, and to cast stereotypes based on one case is not only unfair, but it shows a lack of information.”

Late diagnosis

It wasn’t until Joel was a freshman that an alert teacher recognized that he had the symptons of autism.

“One of his teachers had been reading up on it for another reason,” said Jean. “They thought maybe this was what Joel had, so we took him to see a neuro-psychologist.”

Once at Julia Domino’s office in Portland, after a series of tests, Joel was diagnosed with autism.

“It was autism and not Asperger’s because of the way his speech and motor skills developed after the age of two,” said Jean. “That is the biggest factor in determining where to classify it.”

As for the apraxia, steps were taken from birth to help Joel in his every day life.

“The best way to describe apraxia is in electricity,” said Jean. “Joel sees a task, looks at it and knows what he wants to do. The message goes to his brain, and when the neurons fire to force a physical response, sometimes they click on and sometimes there is a short circuit.”

Transitions

One of the constant’s in Joel’s life is Fuller, who worked with Joel as an occupational therapist in grade school.

“What he worked on at the time was the development of his fine motor skills,” said Jean.

As he moved through grade school, Joel had an aide in all of his classes. That changed in middle school with his need to switch classrooms between periods. Still, someone was always available for him in case he needed help.

Outside of school, Joel became active in sports, participating in the Winter and Summer Special Olympics. When he got to high school, after taking a year off to settle into his new surroundings, it was no surprise that he again found Fuller.

One of the guys’

In the spring of 2003, Joel ran track, where Fuller is an assistant coach, for the first time. After missing the 2003 start date for cross country, Joel again ran track last spring and made sure to note the start time for this year’s season.

“To me, cross country is good for anybody in any situation,” said Fuller. “The nice things about the sport in the first place is that everyone that participates has a respect for everyone else because they all know what it takes. They are all in the same situation as far as training and the work ethic needed to run well.”

The team has embraced Joel as one of their own.

Dan Suthers, a senior captain on this year’s state championship-contending team, has worked with Joel in school as a peer advisor as well as on the trails.

“The first day he was here, there was some work to be done,” said Suthers. “I took him out on the course, showed him around and the route and everything. At the beginning, he couldn’t finish the whole thing, but now his form is better, he is stronger and his times are getting lower all the time. It’s just been a huge improvement.”

“No one looks down on him out there,” said Tyler Clark. “He’s just another one of the guys on the team. He surprised us at first, being able to adapt so well, and now he’s just one of us.”

And Joel? He apparently enjoys being around his teammates, too.

“I just like it because I am here with my friends,” said Joel. “It’s fun to work out with everyone, to stay in shape. I have improved a lot this year running, and that’s because of all of them over there. I like being busy.”

The team is a source of inspiration for Joel, and the effects are often reciprocated.

“He is one of the most positive influences on this team,” said Suthers. “He helps us out in that way. You can always count on him to make you laugh and he is always in a positive, good mood.”

The future

That Joel has made progress isn’t in doubt.

In school, he is mainstreamed into normal, everyday classes in every subject except math and English.

“Science is his strong point,” said Jean. “He likes history and computers, too. A tech will go with him if he needs one, but usually he is very stubborn about doing things on his own, and we are very happy about that.”

On the running trails, Joel has exceeded expectations as well.

“Knowing Joel for a long time, it is incredible how far he has come,” said Fuller. “It is very satisfying to know that a youngster I knew several years ago and worked with as an OT has been able to persevere and in 10 or 11 years become a varsity athlete. Cross country is a good experience for any youngster. It’s good for Joel, good for the team and good for me as a coach and as a person.”

And for Jean and her husband Jerry, an engineer at BIW, the progress Joel has made since being active in sports, particularly in track and cross country, has been remarkable.

“I can attribute to these kids and to Hank a great deal of his progress,” said Jean. “His ability to socialize, to be a working member of his school community, that comes with caring individuals that understand that he is just like every other student there, and that he can do everything that they can do.”

Apparently, not only is Joel not slowing down, he is in fact speeding up.