FEBRUARY 18, 2020 — UTSA’s Department of Campus Recreation has partnered with Special Olympics Texas to form a Unified Sports basketball league that will play games on Sunday evenings in the coming weeks at the Recreation Wellness Center on the university’s Main Campus.
Unified Sports programs were created by the Special Olympics organization to give young people with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to play sports alongside their peers. Pairing Special Olympics athletes with their fellow students has gone a long way in destigmatizing disabilities and changing cultures at schools and universities, and it gives every participant the opportunity to develop lasting friendships.
—ANDREW CHADICK, Senior Associate Director of Programs and Assessment of Campus Rec
“The impact has been immeasurable,” said Jalen Lewis, the San Antonio area program director for Special Olympics Texas. “Unified Sports are a great social inclusion tool that has brought a segregated community back into the fold. I’ve seen Special Olympics athletes improve in their athletic skills, social skills and become more exposed to the world outside of sports.”
More than 4,500 K-12 schools and 75 universities in the U.S. have Unified Sports teams or leagues, according the Special Olympics, and UTSA has become the latest to embrace the uplifting sports experience. The Sports Programs staff at Campus Rec spearheaded the initiative after discussing the positives of Unified Sports with colleagues at other institutions that had worked with Special Olympics organizers to create Unified leagues.
“We realized that starting them here at UTSA was something that we both needed and wanted to do,” said Andrew Chadick, Campus Rec’s senior associate director of programs and assessment. “One of our core values at Campus Recreation is inclusion, and I can’t think of a better example of inclusion than a Unified league.” He added that the Department of Campus Recreation worked with Special Olympics Texas to craft a league that will have a positive impact not only on the physical well-being of everyone involved but also their social and emotional well-being.
The Unified basketball league will consist of four teams, and Special Olympics athletes will be assigned to each squad: one with members of the UTSA Pre-Physical Therapy Society, one made up of UTSA students from Campus Crusade for Christ, one consisting of student employees from Campus Rec, and one featuring students who are regular participants in UTSA’s intramural leagues.
Lewis added that UTSA and Special Olympics Texas have a fantastic relationship. The university consistently provides volunteers for Special Olympics competitions and events and has shown a commitment to the organization and its athletes, so creating a Unified league with UTSA Campus Rec seemed like a slam-dunk. “Starting this league with UTSA was something we’ve wanted to do for a while,” he said. “We felt like the next step was to introduce Unified Sports and make it a natural presence on the campus.”
Campus Rec has now received a tremendous response from several other campus organizations that are interested. “We’re hopeful to expand our Unified offerings to different sports and potentially add more teams to the league in the future,” Chadick said. Those future leagues, like all UTSA intramural leagues, will be open to currently enrolled students as well as faculty and staff who are Campus Rec members.
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