Carrboro Flag Football Game Brings Together Disabled, Non-Disabled Students

Saturday, April 19, about 20 young people, some with special needs and some without, gathered in Carrboro High School’s gym to play flag football together.

Anna Broome, 17, planned the event to fit the vision of the partnership between Special Olympics North Carolina and the N.C. High School Athletic Association. The groups want to bring students with mental disabilities into contact with students without disabilities.

The inspiration came last July when Broome attended a meeting of the Special Olympics and the NCHSAA as a member of the association’s Student Athletic Advisory Council.

“We talked a lot about how we could make a partnership between special needs athletes and general ed high school students,” Broome said. Project UNIFY, which came from that partnership, promotes what the groups call “unified sports.”

“The goal of unified sports is to have half the team be general education and half the team be special education,” Broome said.

Though no one told her how to do it, she planned the event, got people to sign up, held a practice session, had blue and green T-shirts available for players, and managed to hold the event in spite of the rain.

When Project UNIFY began in fall 2008, only nine North Carolina schools participated. Now, 231 schools engage in the program. Events are usually coordinated by Special Olympics rather than students, she said, but they all have a “huge impact.”

With eight or nine students on each team, the Carrboro gym soon filled with yells and laughter. James Scott, a 17-year-old basketball star at Carrboro High School, started the morning by leading the students in stretching. He counted to 10 and switched stretches. Then the students shared their names and something interesting about themselves.

Events such as the one Broome planned give non-special needs students a chance to socialize with special needs students. Freshman Grace Nanny, 14, is not special needs, and said she was glad for that chance.

Nanny got involved with the school’s Special Olympics club when she met with Broome, who was sitting at an informational table during lunch. “I started talking to Anna and got interested,” she said.

“It’s cool being able to play with them,” she said.

In gym class, the seven or eight special needs students practice separately. “We never really get to talk,” Nanny said.

Scott agreed. “You’re meeting people you normally wouldn’t meet,” he said. “Their awesome personalities – they’re people like all of us, and they should have fun with us, too.”

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North Carolina School Boards AssociationCarrboro Flag Football Game Brings Together Disabled, Non-Disabled Students