Inclusive Sports

I started competing in Special Olympics sports when I was 14. It was part of a class at Hunter High School with Coach Ashley Ellis. I was going to be one of the first students to participate in the Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools® program right before the COVID-19 pandemic. The class was small at first, but we made good friendships as we went. When I first started, I was very nervous because I didn’t know what I was walking into, but now I have realized the doors that were opened and the opportunities the program gave me. We got to play in a lot of different high schools around Salt Lake, and more schools in Utah started to get involved.

In 2022, we started inviting a lot more schools from different counties and school districts to play with us. We started playing games and going to tournaments at big universities, the Utah Jazz arena, and the Real Salt Lake Field. This was also the year we started theater class as a Unified program. We did Beauty and The Beast and then Finding Nemo when I was a senior, and I got to play Dory.

By the time I was a senior and graduating, the entire school was involved, and Unified classes were really popular. A lot of people wanted to enjoy the classes, and we started going to school dances as a class. A lot of people won kings and queens there. The summer I graduated, Coach Ellis took me to a leadership conference in Wisconsin, where I learned a lot. Coach Ellis truly believes in me and that I can do hard things. I want to thank her for believing in me to be part of this program. Without her, there would be no inclusion program at Hunter. She invited me to play with them until I am 22, and I am so happy that I met her and that I have gotten to enjoy her program for such a long time. I will miss it when I am not able to do it anymore.