Unified sports grows game
MIAA, Special Olympics partnership pays dividends
Tom Angelo admired the scene of Somerset Berkley’s first-ever unified track meet in the spring of 2014, back when he was a first-year athletic director at the school and unified sports was still in its infancy in the MIAA circuit.
Angelo watched studentathletes with and without intellectual learning disabilities teaming up and enjoying competition. He saw the camaraderie between them that Special Olympics Massachusetts hoped to create by part
nering with the MIAA, and the loud, supportive cheering at the track was hard to miss.
But so was the woman he saw leaning up against the fence, watching and crying. When he approached her, she told him that her son was one of those boys competing. The raucous cheering was the first time anyone had cheered for him in sports. Ever.
It warmed her heart, and that melted Angelo’s. Now the athletic director at Franklin, Angelo will never forget that moment.
“After that day, I said I was 100% in,” said Angelo, a MIAA committee member for unified sports and a member of the Special Olympics Massachusetts Educators Leaders Network. “If you ask a student-athlete what’s the best part about high school, they’re going to say, ‘my athletics.’ It was such a disservice (before) to keep that from students who have intellectual learning disabilities. … It broke my heart to think how we take this for granted.”
Most high school sports haven’t always been inclusive for all students who enjoy sports to don school colors and be a part of the athletic community. It’s not blatant, but students with learning disabilities have been somewhat excluded from those experiences, with a few exceptions.
With unified sports, the general concept is to place students with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team — basketball or track — and work together for their school to beat the other schools they play. General education students, or partner athletes, help guide play through the games and meets in competition against other schools.
In turn, it normalizes a greater sense of community that doesn’t prevent student-athletes with learning disabilities from the joys and life skills that come from playing team sports.
“Getting the relationship with (the MIAA) to support the sports aspect of our program is so key to just normalize (unified
sports) as any other sport in the high school,” said Kathleen Lutz, the Special Olympics Massachusetts schools and unified sports manager. “It just changes the way people think about each other. Some of these students have never worn a school jersey in their lives. When you tell their parents, ‘ Your kid is going to be like any other kid,’ there’s not a dry eye in the house because they’ve been waiting for this opportunity.”
That change in culture is exactly why unified sports has grown dramatically since the partnership came to be in 2012. From nine schools with track programs in 2014, there are 89 today. Unified basketball has seen the same upswing, increasing from 19 teams in 2017 to 95 now.
Pete Smith, the MIAA unified sports liaison since 2017, says unified track — with two divisions already — might be expanding its number of sectional tournaments soon with how many programs come to compete. Basketball doesn’t have sectional tournaments as more of a development model, but does have round-robin-like jamborees for any program that wants to come for one final hoorah of competition. The number of jamborees — located across the state for regional play — has increased from one in 2015 to nine last year, with 81 teams participating.
“It’s been incredible to see that growth develop over the past several years, and I think a lot of schools are seeing what running an inclusive program like this is all about, and what it does for their school climate,” Smith said. “It’s so inspiring to see. … A lot of schools have seen other schools develop their programs, and seen the positive impact. That’s been a motivating factor (for expan
sion).”
Beyond administrators, students within communities across the state take notice of the impact of unified sports and want to contribute.
A couple of years ago, after Waltham coaches Sidney Lindstrom (girls soccer) and Denise Nugent (field hockey) took eight students to a MIAA diversity and inclusion workshop led by Lutz, those students approached athletic director Steve LaForest and other administrators about getting the Hawks a unified sports team to compete in the DCL. They found the students who wanted to play and helped get a roster together.
“What we did was on the day of the first home game, the coaches on those teams brought all the players to the gym to watch the game,” said LaForest. “The look on the players’ faces when they came — the cheerleaders came, they created a little tunnel for starting lineups. When the kids came through the tunnel, the look on their faces was priceless. … It’s been a positive experience, we’re happy we (started the program).”
In Lowell, the Red Raiders unified basketball team has a stream of benefits that come with their involvement, too. Alongside the players as most partner athletes are student-athletes with social learning disabilities, who enter a new realm of leadership. It boosts their role and morale within the community on top of the team’s players, much like it has for every member school in the state.
They play in the MVC, one of a few leagues to have the majority of members with unified sports programs. At the current pace of growth, there’s a feeling the other leagues and conferences aren’t too far behind.