2024 USA Blind Soccer Men’s National Team

Noah Beckman, 31, has played soccer since the age of six and has also been involved in swimming, wrestling, track, beep baseball, hockey and goalball. He became active with blind soccer in 2018 and has participated in numerous USA Blind Soccer talent identification camps. A member of the inaugural USA Blind Soccer Men’s National Team in 2022, he netted a goal in the team’s 3-0 victory over Canada in an international friendly in March 2023. In high school, Beckman placed individually in several wrestling, track and swimming events and led his goalball team to a second-place finish in the conference. As an adult, he led his goalball teams at the USABA National Championships with a final-four finish in 2016 and a runner-up finish in 2019. Beckman plays beep baseball with the Chicago Comets and practices regularly with a blind hockey program in Columbus.

Charles Catherine, 35, is a former elite blind triathlete, originally from France, who was an alternate on the inaugural USA Blind Soccer Men’s National Team in 2022. A 2012 graduate of Sciences Po Bordeaux, France, Catherine holds a master’s degree in international relations and works as the director of corporate and government relations for the National Organization on Disability (NOD). He is also a classical pianist, a husband, and the happy father of two beautiful girls.

Cody Kirchner, 34, fell in love with blind soccer the moment he stepped on the pitch and found he could run without being stopped or held back. Since that day he has dreamed of earning a spot on the U.S. National Team and one day competing for a Paralympic medal. Kirchner wrestled in middle school and high school before being introduced to goalball when he transferred to a blind school and competed on the New Jersey Thunder Goalball Team. He also played beep baseball for the Philadelphia Fire.

For Alvaro Mora Arellano, 36, soccer has always been his first love. As a young boy, he dreamt of being on a real soccer field dribbling the ball as part of a team. He was introduced to goalball as a teenager in Mexico and liked it because of its similarities to soccer. Mora Arellano attended his first blind soccer clinic in 2019 after seeing an invitation in the USABA monthly newsletter. As a member of the first USA Blind Soccer Men’s National Team named in 2022, he made history by scoring the first goal in the team’s history during an international friendly with Canada.

Kyle Knott, 37, was a multi-sport athlete through high school and college. Soccer was one of five sports Knott played while attending high school in Virginia Beach, Va. During his collegiate career at Longwood University, James Madison University and Mars Hill University, he was a cross-country runner, diver, triathlete and cyclist. Knott was the first-ever cycling national champion at Mars Hill in 2011. At the 2016 UCI Track Cycling World Championships, he piloted the tandem for Team USA and won national titles in the BVI tandem road race and BVI kilometer time trial while racing with Chester Triplett and Davian Robinson. Knott’s passion for soccer continued throughout his life by playing and coaching with club and scholastic teams. Knott was named to the inaugural 2022 Men’s Blind Soccer National Team and was part of the squad to play the team’s first friendly matches against Canada keeping two shutouts.