Wahconah Unified Track Team Holds Inaugural Home Meet

DALTON, Mass. -- There will be high school athletes who run faster, throw farther and jump longer at Wahconah Regional High School this spring.

 

But it is a fair bet that few will smile more brightly, cheer more heartily or try any harder than the ones who gathered on Thursday for the school’s first ever Unified track and field meet.

 

Unified Sports, an initiative of the Special Olympics, “joins people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team.”

 

At Wahconah, organizers anticipated having maybe a dozen or so students would be interested in the upstart sport.

 

On Thursday, they had more than two dozen wearing the school colors, a number roughly evenly divided between special education and regular education students.

 

“The size of the team is incredible,” head coach Jennifer Bell said. “So many of the students have stepped up and wanted to be a part of the team.

 

“They are such an amazing group of high schoolers. They are so helpful and kind. The community the team has built together … it is different. It shows that for the students at Wahconah, inclusion is a big part of the community.”

 

Bell, who teaches in the special education program at Craneville Elementary, said that the culture of inclusion is strong throughout the Central Berkshire Regional School District.

 

And on Thursday, when Wahconah hosted South Hadley, that spirit was on full display -- not only among the athletes on the Unified team but also among the many students who took time out of their day to come be timers, hold a tape measure or just cheer on their schoolmates.

 

In addition to the athletes and family members, the infield of the track was filled with members of Wahconah’s baseball team, which came by after practice, and its girls lacrosse and softball teams, who dropped by before their Thursday evening games.

 

A marathon runner who competed at Boston earlier this month herself, Bell said the sport “taps into two things that really resonate with me.”

 

And, so far, she is having a blast coaching the athletes.

 

“The team is just a phenomenal group of kids,” she said. “They come together as a team and a community to support each other. The things I have them doing on the track and field together, the way they support each other, everyone is there to strive for their personal best.”

 

Regular education members of the team compete on their own and, occasionally, help guide their teammates in their run to the long jump pit or on the track oval.

 

Some of the team members are varsity athletes in the fall and winter who added a third sport to their academic repertoire this spring.

 

“The great thing with the Unified team is we also have students who have never participated in high school sports who have come out to join a team all the way up to the kids who are varsity athletes in other parts of the year,” Bell said. “We have a huge spectrum of different kids who are coming out to join the team.”

 

The athletes competed in four disciplines, taking their turns rotating through the shot put, long jump and javelin before the action moved to the track.

 

On Thursday evening, Bell was still compiling results. Events are scored in eight different categories to ensure that students are competing against peers with similar abilities.

 

With an overwhelming numerical advantage over the smaller South Hadley team, there was little doubt Wahconah would have emerged with a team victory in its home debut. Next Thursday, it will be challenged by similarly sized squads.

 

But don’t expect anyone to get too hung up on scores.

 

“The good thing is the goal is really for everyone to strive for their own personal best at each meet and improve on their own level,” Bell said.

 

Photos of this event here.