At East Clinton's first home football game last month, a nine-year-old girl with cerebral palsy took the field alongside her entire pee wee cheerleading squad wearing the same shoes she does — adaptive footwear her own family built so she could walk, cheer, and belong right alongside her teammates. Sophie Urbanowicz, of New Vienna, Ohio, has spastic triplegic cerebral palsy, and her journey with the shoes has become a symbol of what inclusion can look like on a small-town sideline in Clinton County.
Sophie's father, Michael Urbanowicz, founded the nonprofit Faith Over CP, which is the Urbanowicz family's organization built around the adaptive shoe line his daughter now wears. As reported by WKRC, Michael said Sophie was out there with the girls as part of an inclusion celebration, and that her adaptive footwear journey started five years ago. The family calls the shoes SophTops, and Faith Over CP donated pairs to Sophie's entire East Clinton Pee Wee cheerleading team so the whole squad could wear them together at that first home game.
According to the family, inclusion can be as simple as making sure everyone gets to be part of the team, and Sophie's teammates make sure she knows she belongs. WKRC reports Sophie is determined to walk, cheer, and participate just like the rest of her squad, and the SophTops help with her mobility on the field.
From a Father's Frustration to a Patented Design
The SophTops, along with a companion line called GabeTops, were engineered around a built-in support system the family calls InvisaBrace, paired with a 20-degree spring-loaded toe lift meant to serve as a discreet stand-in for bulky, traditional Ankle-Foot Orthoses, according to Faith Over CP. Sophie's cerebral palsy causes toe walking, which the nonprofit says is what originally pushed her father to design footwear that integrates that support directly into the shoe rather than strapping a brace on top of it. The high-top version of the shoe also includes a modular ToeLift insert system with stackable 10-degree, 20-degree, and 30-degree profiles, letting each foot be adjusted independently to match a child's specific gait needs.
Michael Urbanowicz began developing footwear solutions after struggling to find shoes that could fit over his daughter's braces, and the nonprofit's design work has since drawn in outside researchers. Faith Over CP collaborated with researchers at the University of Dayton on clinical case studies that helped shape early designs, including a prototype known as the Sophie Boot, per the organization.
A National Data Gap Finally Getting Attention
Sophie's diagnosis fits into a broader public health picture that only recently came back into focus. CDC surveillance data published in Pediatrics: Open Science in August found that roughly 2.4 out of every 1,000 eight-year-old children in the United States have cerebral palsy, with spastic CP as the most common subtype, as reported by Disability Scoop. That figure exists at all because the CDC expanded its Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network across select state pilot sites in 2023 to resume tracking cerebral palsy prevalence in 4-year-olds and 8-year-olds, with dedicated federal funding running through 2026, according to the Arc of Florida. Federal tracking of the condition had been paused since 2010 because of budget constraints.
Faith Over CP's shoe platform started as a personal fix for Sophie's needs but has since grown to serve children with more than 15 physical and neurological disabilities, including autism, the nonprofit says. The organization operates as a 501(c)(3) and has taken its mission beyond southwestern Ohio, delivering adaptive footwear, athletic equipment, and educational supplies to children in Panama. Faith Over CP has also released a limited-edition shoe, the DURAN Legacy Steps, in partnership with boxing champion Roberto Durán, directing a portion of proceeds toward cerebral palsy research and family support grants; the nonprofit points to Durán's Hands of Stone nickname as a symbol of resilience for the families it serves.
Part of a Growing Adaptive Footwear Market
The family's homegrown project sits inside an industry that is expanding fast. Market research from Dataintelo projects the global adaptive footwear market will exceed $10 billion by 2030 as both specialized nonprofits and mainstream athletic brands roll out more accessible shoe lines. Sophie attends New Vienna Elementary within the East Clinton Local School District, which serves Sabina, New Vienna, and surrounding townships in rural Clinton County, and where she has previously been recognized on the honor roll, according to the Wilmington News Journal.
What started as one family's search for a better option for their daughter has now reached far beyond their own front yard. WKRC reports that Sophie's story has reached more than one million people on social media, turning a small-town cheer squad's matching shoes into a much larger conversation about what inclusion looks like when a whole team decides to show up the same way.
