Philadelphia - The amputee crutch soccer team made its debut with players making a couple goals, making defensive dives, and occasionally falling.

Mike Doyle was among them.

Doyle, 42, of Warrington, is a paralympic gold medalist in swimming and is on the national sled hockey team. He lost his right leg after a 1976 motorcycle crash.

"Having a disability shouldn't be the end of your life,"he said, sweat dripping from his face after the game. "I'll try any crazy sport at least once."

About 15 men and women, who were in their mid-twenties to late fifties, learned the finer points of soccer at the Woodhaven Sports Center in Northeast Philadelphia last Saturday.

The game was intense, competitive and aggressive under Coach Tom Feller, who also coaches the National Amputee Soccer Team, in Seattle.

The unnamed Philadelphia team is the only one like it on the East Coast, and is only the third in the nation, after Seattle and Los Angeles.

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