By Kurt Klier, Assistant Director, University Recreation & Wellness, University of Maryland-College Park
In 2011, in a very exciting move, the NIRSA Championship Series partnered with the Special Olympics for the very first time. Southern Illinois University offered a Special Olympics Unified Sports Division at a NIRSA regional flag football tournament, and four teams participated. Since then, a Special Olympics Unified Sports Division has been available during at least one NIRSA regional flag football tournament every year. The success of these tournaments has been rewarding for everyone involved—this includes both the Championship Series and Special Olympics.
The Special Olympics’ main theme of “Social Inclusion Through Sports” is not all that different from the Series’ mission. As collegiate recreation professionals, we believe that the scope of learning is not limited to the classroom. Instead, we know it involves all aspects of a student’s experience. This includes recreational activities. Unified Sports teams are made up of people of similar age and physical ability, which makes practices more fun and games more challenging and exciting for all. Having sport in common is just one more way that preconceptions and false ideas about those with intellectual disabilities are swept away. The Special Olympics believe that “team sports bring people together. Special Olympics Unified Sports teams do that too, and much more. Half a million people worldwide take part in Unified Sports, breaking down stereotypes about people with intellectual disabilities in a really fun way.”
At the University of Maryland-College Park, we’ve hosted instate Unified flag football teams as well as teams from Texas, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and North Carolina. The number of teams, athletes, parents, and supporters has grown every year. The flag football tournament is hosted in conjunction with the NIRSA Mid-Atlantic Regional Flag Football Championships. That is one key to our success: to not only combine the two events, but to make sure they functioned as one event.
Craig Pippert, Special Olympics Senior Manager of Sports Development, supports this striving for unity: “We want to weave in just like any other collegiate team. The goal is that when you’re watching a Unified game you don’t know who the [Special Olympic] athletes are and who the Unified partners are. We’re a part of the tournament community this way. The Unified Sports motto is ‘on the field we’re teammates, off the field we’re friends,’ and that’s really been enacted at Maryland.”
The reactions and friendships between our students and the athletes has been truly inspiring to watch. The Special Olympics is dedicated “to promoting social inclusion through shared sports training and competition experiences. Unified Sports joins people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team. It was inspired by a simple principle: training together and playing together is a quick path to friendship and understanding.” In line with this principle, every year after an exhibition game the students and athletes walk together to the recreation center for a sit-down meal. The interaction between the students and athletes is a major key to the success of the partnership.
“Let me win; but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” -Special Olympics Athlete Oath
That being said, I believe we could be doing more.
In the state of Maryland, over 7,000 athletes trained and competed in one or more of the 27 sport programs in 2014. According to state officials, “On the surface, 7,169 athletes seems like a good number until you consider that there are over 115,000 individuals with an intellectual disability in Maryland. So we are reaching less than 7% of the eligible population. By 2018 Special Olympics Maryland aspires to have 13,000 athletes participating in Special Olympics Maryland programs.”
We need to be doing more.
Recently, NIRSA Headquarters announced a partnership with Special Olympics. The announcement to expand Special Olympics Unified Sports programs and opportunities at participating NIRSA member colleges and universities throughout the US comes on the heels of meetings that took place between NIRSA staff and volunteer leaders and Special Olympics’ North American regional leaders. These meetings were held at UCLA during the recent 2015 Special Olympics World Games in Los Angeles. You can read all about the World Games on the NIRSA website.
The future is bright and full of endless possibilities with this partnership. Never has the NIRSA Championship Series been in a better position to help drive an initiative. I firmly believe that this program will be a success. As NIRSA members, it’s hard to imagine a better opportunity than this one to inspire healthy people and healthy communities through living our values; this is a chance to really embrace values like inclusion, service, and sustainability!
It was Dale Carnegie who said “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” Success and fun. That sounds like the NIRSA Championship Series to me!
