Writer’s Note: This is one of the posts that I created and worked with the good people at Special Olympics Ontario during my summer job at the office. I was waiting for a good time–the right time–to post this so that its content was timely. Given that this is a new year, I figured it would be perfect to showcase a little of what SO has been planning for some of the months we have ahead of us.
Retrieved from https://www.eventbrite.ca/o/special-olympics-ontario-invitational-youth-games-18307957851
The 2019 Special Olympics Invitational Youth Games. I’ve heard and seen mentionings of this for a while now, and some people in the office are planning the Youth Games out right now as we speak. There is a lot of anticipation around this event. But what are the Youth Games?
They are an international sports competition for SO Athletes between the ages of 13 and 21. It is in similar scale to Special Olympics’ regular World Games, but managed out of Special Olympic Ontario’s School Programs department instead of the community-level Games section of the office. 2,300 Athletes from School and Youth Programs are going to be invited: 1,200 from Ontario, 300 from other parts of Canada, 500 from the United States, and 300 people from other countries around the world. This is the first event of its kind, making it a new opportunity for youths in SO.
Ontario, it’s huge. Image retrieved from, https://www.ontario-canada-travel.com/map-of-ontario.html
What sports are going to be played? The usual 5 suspects in School Champs: basketball, soccer, bocce, track and field, and floor hockey. Unified and Traditional events are offered, among multiple divisioning levels to ensure fair competition.
2 different floor hockey tournaments are going down: the regular Youth competitions, and a separate tournament sponsored by the NHL. This NHL-sponsored tournament is for adults in SO. It is designed to honour and recreate the original Canadian floor hockey team that participated in the 1968 International Games in Soldier Field, Chicago.
Post-secondary Unified Intramural teams are welcome as well, and will be having their own tournament alongside the other 2. As if that wasn’t enough, an elementary school sports festival is going on during this time as well. Intermediate programs are the only ones not being represented here, probably because they’re so new [not even running yet at time of writing].
How do get you invited to these Games? In Ontario, they’re going to be using the Regional Qualifiers as a tryouts for these Games, just like how the Qualifiers usually determine who is going to Provincials. This year, the Invitational Games are replacing the Provincials in School Championships and joining with the Floor Hockey Provincials. I don’t feel like anyone will have a problem with that.
Image retrieved from http://woodstockminorhockey.ca/news.php?news_id=1122605
Now, hopefully you can see why there is so much excitement around these Games. However, the School Championships were not started with international competition in mind. They were not started with the idea that some of their athletes would be picked for a large scale event meant to celebrate the 50 years that Special Olympics has been around, nor were they created with anything other than the local scale in mind.
4 Corners was the original name of School Championships. Competitions did exist in high schools for quite a bit of time before then—School Programs began in the year 2000, and 4 Corners officially started in 2011—but honestly, the Secondary School Programs didn’t have the same energy or passion like they do now. The competitions that went on before 2011 were isolated; there were no qualifiers for athletes to try and cinch a spot in a big Game like the Provincials.
It’s a large part of how Special Olympics works, the Games. Dreaming of going to a big, festive competition—just like the Olympians do on TV—it really gets you moving. Especially when there’s no limit until the International scale, when you’re probably being flown on a plane somewhere, and everything just feels so big. It motivates you to train, and improve yourself physically, mentally and socially so that you have a chance at winning. This is everything that Special Olympics was designed to do: improve its athletes in all parts of life.
The dream of getting to compete in the World Games–such as the 2019 Games in Abu Dhabi, UAE–are one such example of motivation. Image retrieved from http://wam.ae/en/details/1395302643942
Take it from me. I grew up a little more health-focused than most kids, my mom is a nurse, and one of my favourite movies was Super Size Me. I’ve been physically active as long as I can remember, first starting in Special Olympics when I was 8 years old, through swimming. Now I’m also involved with basketball, soccer, and track; as someone with a competitive personality, I work hard in all of them. Outside of SO, I do Tae Kwon Do and currently have a first degree black belt in it, which was one of the hardest things I’ve earned.
Even then, 2018 was the year that I pushed myself even further, and my body has improved as a result. Why? This was the year that I knew in advance that I’d be competing in Columbus for the Unified NIRSA league, Chicago for the 50th Anniversary Unified World Cup, and the Qualifiers for Provincials are coming up this 2019. Because I wanted to do the best I could, it motivated me to do in-house exercises—taking what I knew from my years of experience with martial arts and Special Olympics sports—so that I could increase my endurance and cardio*.
By the time I went to Ohio, the first Big Game that I was training for, I noticed that I was running around a lot longer without getting tired like I used to. I still enjoy the benefits of my improved health, long after these tournaments have past. My story, like a lot of my Special Olympics stories, is not unique. Across all the ability levels, ages and backgrounds, the drive to compete in our division of our favourite sports motivates all of us to improve ourselves. And it works.
*Side note: Healthy Athletes is running the educational Fit Five program, for other Athletes in the same boat as me who might need some help in figuring out exercises for themselves.
These are some of booklets that they sometimes hand out at Special Olympic events. You can also find information online by searching for “Special Olympics Fit 5”
Long story short, the problem with the old secondary School Programs is they didn’t have that big goal to reach, so there was no reason to train. People would show up for the one-day tournament, and that was it. The 4 Corners introduced a Provincial Games, that people could only get into if they made it past the Regional Qualifiers. And that’s when all bets were off.
So, I talked with James Noronha, who was one of the 5 people who sat down at the table to discuss the School Championships—then the 4 Corners—in its early planning stages. He said that, “We always intended it to be big. I don’t think we expected it to be so big that quickly.” Talking about how people in the SOO office had to basically catch up with the success of their work, he said, “It was, still is to be honest, a bit of a runaway train.”
That being said, it is obvious to me that James and everyone else in School Programs likes riding this runaway train, and maybe—on some level—they might not want it to stop.
Image retrieved from https://listsurge.com/top-10-fastest-trains-world/
The Youth Invitational Games are really exciting. They’re basically the 50th Anniversary Unified World Cup that I went to, but for the School Programs. It’s not just me and the other athletes who are excited, but the people who work for Special Olympics as well.
Glenn MacDonnell [Special Olympics Ontario’s CEO] has been hoping for an event like this for a long time. It couldn’t have happened if not for School Championships’ massive growth. The people who work in School Programs—from long-running veterans like James and Glenn, to those who just got in this year—get to see the fruits of their labour in the joy that Athletes and Partners experience thanks to their hard work.
For the Youth Games, that labour fruit is even more special. Because while most Special Olympic programs have at least some standing in the rest of the organization, this is entirely new. It just started 6 years ago, in 2011. But you don’t have to take it from me. During my time as a summer student, I interviewed Kirsten Bobbie, who is the manager of these Youth Games, and was also one of the people who saw the early stages of School Championships long before I even knew they existed.
Kirsten described this growth by comparing two Provincial Opening Ceremonies: the 2012 Opening at Wilfred Laurier—which 40 Athletes attended—to the 2018 Ceremonies in Peterborough which were witnessed by 900 SO Athletes. She said, “We’ve grown from James standing on a table at East Side Mario’s, to live on television in a whole arena, this year in Peterborough.”
While this is probably not the exact restaurant that the 2012 Opening Ceremonies, it probably looked similar to this one. Image retrieved from https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Restaurant_Review-g154995-d793785-Reviews-East_Side_Mario_s-London_Ontario.html
This is a pic I snapped of people who were sitting on the sidelines around the large crowd of Athletes that I enjoyed the 2018 Opening Ceremonies with, to give you a sense of scale. And it doesn’t even show most of the arena.
“It’s grown drastically.” Kirsten says, “Having said that, all of our main concepts are still the same, and they’re the same at all the Games. Our Athletes get to march in, we light the cauldron, The Flame comes in, the LETR [Law Enforcement Torch Run]. All of the main people are the same, we’ve just expanded the number of people that are there,” As someone who went to the Peterborough Games, I can completely attest to her statement.
It’s this growth that Kirsten hopes the Youth Invitational Games will help spread to other parts of Special Olympics, across the world.
“These Games, in my mind, are an opportunity for Ontario to showcase to the rest of the world all the great things we’ve been doing in the past six years.”, she explains. Kristen also pointed out that Special Olympics Ontario is the only chapter to hold a School Provincials every year, and one of the only SO chapters to do so holding Unified and Traditional competitions side by side for their schools. “This is our chance,” she says, “to invite everyone in to see it. […] for them to go home and tell all their friends about how great it is and start Special Olympics programming just like [Ontario’s Programs] in their schools in their hometowns.”
To me, it feels quite fitting to end Special Olympics’ 50th Anniversary, by starting an event that could help build its future for the next 50 years. A future that is an inclusive, unified, accessible place for all the world’s youth.
Autism Thinking 