Creating friendships, inclusion chief among goals of public schools’ Unified Sports program

Student athletes from across Edmonton took part in a sports event focused on inclusion, teamwork and community at Jasper Place High School.

It’s more than an athletic event: the Unified Sports jamboree is about friendship and creating a sense of belonging and community.

Jasper Place School and Metro Athletics hosted the seventh-annual Special Olympics program on Tuesday, bringing more than 1,000 student athletes with and without intellectual disabilities together from 37 area high schools to train and compete on the same teams in three events: bean-bag toss, three-on-three basketball and bocce ball.

Lauren Green, the athletic director at the west-end Jasper Place School, said she recalls students taking a lot away from last year’s jamboree hosted by Beaumont, and not just swag.

“There was one of the stations was giving out for free the Pit Viper sunglasses,” Green told media at Jasper Place School. “A bunch of them got to take some home, and I think they wore them every day for the rest of the school year. I still remember the last day of school as well, the kids running around with their yearbooks, trying to get their yearbook signed by their Unified partners. They were truly looking for their friends, which was awesome.”

Tuesday’s jamboree is the culmination of a year’s worth of program events in which schools can field teams in different sports.

Green said creating inclusion at schools helps students get to know each other when they otherwise wouldn’t.

“For those students from those programs to come in and make friends with students from all different areas in the school, it just adds to your whole culture in your building and creates lifelong friendships,” she said.

The school was also the site of an opening ceremony, and activities such as face-painting, a science station, crafts and a dance.

“I think it’s super important (to participate) as well as to belong in the school,” said volunteer ambassador Samantha Spanach, a Jasper Place Grade 11 student who was helping guide students from Sherwood Park’s Bev Facey High School on Tuesday. “I feel very important today, and I feel like I’m helping people, which is making me feel very grateful to be and have this opportunity here at JP.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Sean McClune