Over the past four years I have become more involved with Special Olympics and unified sports. For those that do not know, unified sports is when athletes team up and compete side by side with Special Olympic athletes. This growing involvement is due to my DIII college experience and the partnership that DIII shares with Special Olympics. I am so thankful for the opportunities I have gotten to spend time playing sports with Special Olympics organizations in a few different states and truly these experiences have changed my life.
As a freshman in college, my softball team volunteered at a Special Olympics softball competition. We ran stations and recorded scores as athletes competed in different skills that could qualify them for the Ohio state Special Olympics competition. Watching these athletes compete in the sport that I love was awesome because I was able to bond with the athletes and connect with them due to commonalities. This was the beginning of my Special Olympics involvement which grew over time.
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During my sophomore year I was selected to be a representative on the DIII Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. This committee dedicates time each year to participate in a Special Olympics unified sports event. We also had a Special Olympics world ambassador named Mitch come speak to us about the importance of unified sports. Mitch is the most inspiring person I have ever listened to and he alone impacted my life before I got to participate in any event. My first year on the committee, Special Olympics Indiana brought close to twenty Special Olympic athletes to the NCAA headquarters where we participated in disc golf. We teamed up as collegiate student-athletes and Special Olympics athletes. I got my butt kicked. I got the opportunity again to connect with these athletes but this time as people who were competing with me.
In that moment I realized it wasn't all about winning but more so about providing the opportunity for these athletes to compete on real teams in real sports. In January of my junior year I then traveled to San Antonio to take part in the NCAA convention where Special Olympics Texas provided us with the opportunity to play flag football with Special Olympics athletes from the area. The event was electric. We packed a room full of DIII athletes and SO athletes and competed for a few hours in one of the most popular sports in Texas. Then, this summer I went back to Indiana and competed with Special Olympics athletes again in basketball. All of these events were so much fun. To see how excited these athletes were to compete with us and to show us their skills was awesome. In these moments I learned that after high school, most Special Olympic athletes don't have the opportunity to compete anymore on teams or individually like I do and that's why unified sports events are so crucial. Competing with these Special Olympic athletes reminded me that sports are about working hard every day, trying to get better for your own personal growth, and enjoying the competition that is inevitably present no matter who is competing.
Thank you NCAA and Division III for your partnership with Special Olympics. Thank you Special Olympics Texas, Indiana and Ohio for your continued work and thank you Mitch for sharing your passion and working to create more opportunities for Special Olympics athletes across the world. You have truly changed my life.
