Intellectually disabled students showed they could be an Olympic athlete too.
More than a hundred students from both Lakehead Public Schools and the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board attended a Special Olympic sports camp held at the Lakehead University Student Union Hangar on Wednesday.
The students played a variety of games that included soccer, track and field and curling.
Jo-Anne Giertuga, the vice-principle at École Gron Morgan Public School, worked with the Special Olympic Committee to organize the event for the students.
Last year the Special Olympic Committee phoned Giertuga to host the event but cold weather delayed the games arrival. They were able to work it out to hold the event at the LU hangar in order to accommodate both school boards.
“I thought it would be a very good avenue and opportunity for our kids to get involved in,” Giertuga said. “It’s such a wonderful opportunity because you see the smiles on the kids’ faces. They participate in a non-threatening environment and all seem very happy to do it.”
Giertuga’s husband, Warren, was active in the Special Olympics Committee and that passion helped to spark an interest for her to become involved as well, she said.
More activities for children with special needs have increased over the years and Giertuga has already are already looked at organizing sporting events such as curling.
She said these kinds of activities give the children a chance to shine.
“When they come back to the school they talk about it and we have slide shows presentations and it’s just a real opportunity for them to shine in a non-threatening environment,” she said. “It feels awesome to just see their faces, their smiles and seeing the level of participation. Just the fact that they can all succeed and all do well just makes me really happy and makes all of our volunteers happy.”
Adrian Szamreta, schools programs developer for Special Olympics Ontario, said they hoped that the students who join these camps one day go on to participate in the Special Olympics when they are older.
“We’ll follow up with the teachers today and say that was a lot of fun how about doing that on a regular basis,” Szamreta said. “The idea is the teachers will start sports clubs in their school. So if someone with an intellectual disability wants to try out for a Special Olympic basketball team they can try out, practice like a mainstream team would, and they will attend competitions and play rival schools.
“For some of these students this is their first taste of Special Olympics and five years from today hopefully we`ll transition into a community program and then shoot for provincials or world games,” he said.
He said The 2011 Special Olympics Winter Games helped them to go into schools and find the volunteers to help put on the camps in Thunder Bay.
Szamreta added they provide their camps free of charge and run everything through volunteers.
