Unified Front - Special Program Brings Students Together

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Unified Front
 Special Program Brings Students Together

March 7, 2002
By ROBERTO GONZALEZ, Courant Staff Writer

BERLIN -- Marie Siegal blows her whistle to stop an intrasquad game. She walks to the middle of the court and stresses the importance of defense. Siegal's Berlin unified high school basketball team watches and listens intently.

"Joyce was already scoring down here before anyone moved down on defense," said Siegal, a special education teacher who has coached the Berlin unified team the last five years.

Play resumes. Joyce Helm drives to the basket, stops and pops in a jump shot, then engages her defender in a little fun trash talk.

"Where were you?" Helm said. "Where were you, huh?"

Helm, 19, is one of the special athletes on Berlin's unified team, which combines players with disabilities ranging from autism to Down syndrome with mainstream students known as special partners.

"I love the coaches, and I love basketball," Helm said. "I like to be active. I don't like sitting home and doing nothing. And I can't forget about my team. I love them, too. I love everybody on the team."

While the NCAA tournaments loom and the CIAC girls and boys tournaments are under way, the Berlin unified basketball team has been preparing for its own postseason play.

Berlin will be playing in three CIAC-sanctioned unified basketball tournaments in the next two weeks, beginning today in Stratford. The next two are Monday at Glastonbury High and Thursday at Norwich Free Academy.

Unified Sports is a registered program of the Special Olympics that combines roughly equal members of special athletes with special partners.

Beau Doherty, executive director of Connecticut Special Olympics, originated the program about 10 years ago. It's now offered in 50 states and 37 countries, totaling more than 65,000 participants.

In 1992, Doherty proposed bringing Unified Sports to Connecticut schools. Connecticut Special Olympics formed a partnership with the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. The Unified Sports School program was born.

"At that point schools were beginning to diversify and open up special education classes," said Ann Malafronte, the director of Unified Sports. "It was a perfect time for the partnership to blossom. It has been embraced by the schools dramatically to the point where there are more than 800 athletes and partners in Connecticut Schools participating."

The CIAC holds unified tournaments in soccer, basketball, volleyball and softball.

The Special Olympics, corporate sponsorships and state grants fund the program, though 95 percent of the coaches involved are volunteers. Some school systems pay unified coaches, Malafronte said.

Game officials donate their services.

All public and parochial schools are invited to participate in the Unified Sports School Program, which begins at the elementary school levels with skill building activities in a variety of sports. At the middle school and high school level, students compete in statewide tournaments.

Teams are co-ed and placed in competitive divisions based on their skill, ranging from training divisions to high level competition. In high school, varsity and junior varsity players cannot participate, and in basketball, there are two special partners and three players with mental retardation on the court at all times.

"Competition is a natural part of our society, so we kind of put it in there," Malafronte said. "But we don't want to make it the be all and end all of who wins. Instead we want to emphasize the purpose is for fun and friendship."

The program has caught on in high schools.

"We have about 40 high schools involved right now, including the Central Connecticut Conference," Malafronte said, "which was the first conference in the nation that had endorsed their own unified division."

About two-thirds of the CCC-member schools have unified teams, Malafronte said. The CCC is holding a conference tournament March 15 at Manchester High with 18 unified squads competing, Malafronte said.

"I've coached at all levels of varsity and junior varsity sports, and this is the most fun that I've had," said coach Andrew Giza, who started one of the first high school unified programs six years ago at Windsor.

Model Program

Siegal began coaching at Berlin the first two years as a volunteer but is now paid and has a paid assistant. She has been a special education teacher for 14 years and said there was need for such a program, which was started under former Berlin athletic director George Hall.

"It's a place for our kids to compete," Siegal said. "Special athletes usually aren't the ones that are going to make a cut sport. This allows them every opportunity to compete. We are part of the athletic department."

First-year Berlin athletic director Jim Day said the unified basketball and soccer teams are funded through the athletic department.

"We treat it just like our wrestling program here," Day said. "They really are no different. Being athletic director and also the department director for special education, this has a special place in my heart."

Not all unified high school teams are treated equally, Siegal said.

"Not all the schools are as lucky as Berlin," Siegal said. "When I go to different meetings and I go to tournaments, it's foreign to us to be told, `We don't have a gym to practice in' or `I can't come to your school because I don't have money for a bus.' I remember my first meeting with all the head coaches of varsity sports and being asked, `When would you like to practice? When do you need the gym?' You can't ask for more than that. I invite some teams here to practice because I do have a gym at my disposal."

At Bloomfield, special education teacher Jill Friedman is a volunteer unified basketball coach and has had trouble finding time to practice. She has been coaching a unified team for the last eight years.

"Finding gym time is nearly impossible," Friedman said. "We've had to practice a few times during lunch."

Siegal has noticed Berlin has been the only high school to send unified team members to the NWC varsity captain's luncheons in the fall and spring.

"It's changing," Siegal said. "I ran into one of the other athletic directors and he said, `I didn't even think of this. It was an oversight on my part. But now I'll be asking my unified teams to send their captains.'"

Between games, scrimmages and tournaments, Berlin will have played 14 to 15 basketball games this season. They've also played in front of packed gyms during halftime of varsity games.

There are four skill levels in unified basketball and Berlin is in the Level 4 category - meaning special athletes are the only players who can score, steal the ball, block shots, or aggressively rebound. No scores are kept, and games consist of two 10-minute halves.

There are 11 players on Berlin's team, six special athletes and five special partners.

The five partners are committed and have been wonderful, Siegal said. But Berlin will soon need more students to volunteer. Four of the five partners graduate in June.

"We're in a panic because we're looking to recruit," Siegal said. "It's not a big-time commitment, but it's a different commitment. Not everyone is comfortable being associated with special athletes. That's one of the biggest problems we have getting partners. They're intimidated or uncomfortable."

Senior Scott Potanka has been involved in Unified Sports since middle school and agrees it hasn't been easy getting students to help because of peer pressure. The reason he volunteers is the underlying purpose of Unified Sports.

"I always enjoyed working with the kids," Potanka said. "Some of them are my best friends now. It's fun. It's rewarding. That's why I do it."

 

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