Special Olympics at Notre Dame

As a varsity athlete at the University of Notre Dame, I am constantly reminded to “Play Like a Champion Today.” As a student in professor Clark Power’s ethics class, I am obliged to question the meaning of such a credo. Too often, the definition of “Champion” is reduced to a mentality of winning at all cost and lacks any consideration of the type of character that merits such a title. Fortunately, the work of the Play Like a Champion Today program is replacing this conception with one that emphasizes an athlete’s physical, mental, social, moral and spiritual growth. While Special Olympics Notre Dame endeavors to promote similar values, we seek also to inspire a more fundamental inquiry. Namely, who should have the opportunity to be a “Champion?”
For the past 40 years, Special Olympics has extended people with intellectual disability the opportunity to engage in sports training and competition. Born of a single event involving athletes from two countries, Special Olympics competition is now found in over 180 countries with over 3 million athletes and 700,000+ volunteers. The most recent 20 years, have brought a growing shift in the sports engagement opportunities of Special Olympics. In addition to traditional competition and training strictly for people with intellectual disability, Special Olympics has enriched its offerings to include sport engagement involving people without intellectual disability not as coaches or support volunteers, but as teammates. In 2009, Special Olympics Unified Sports engaged 324,000 athletes with and without intellectual disabilities as teammates in countries around the world.
The effort now is to bring the power and fun of Unified Sports to university and college campuses. Last year, Special Olympics Notre Dame held the first collegiate unified event in the form of soccer game, in which two teams of athletes with and without intellectual disability participated in four weeks of practice and a game in the Notre Dame soccer stadium. The success of this game has motivated Special Olympics Notre Dame to present this model to colleges across the United States to allow for state, regional and eventually national intercollegiate inclusive soccer leagues.
The formation of a champion requires the opportunity to compete. Unfortunately, athletes with intellectual disabilities are often denied competitive venues, not because of their own physical limitation, but because of societal constraints. The average person regards Intellectual Disability with a paternalistic detachment. Although it is true that coaches and volunteers have something valuable to offer the athletes, the goal of the Inclusive Soccer is the expose the fact the athletes are the true teachers. The lesson is simple, yet profound – everyone can be a “Champion.” With the help of Play Like a Champion Today, Special Olympics Notre Dame is committed to using sport to promote both societal and personal growth. We look forward to watching the inclusive soccer program grow and ask that everyone help spread the word. To close, I will leave you with the Special Olympics motto: “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”

Ted Glasnow
Co-President, Special Olympics Notre Dame
SOND@nd.edu