They're headed back, hoping to defend their gold medal!

A group of students, two with intellectual disabilities and two without, and two teachers from Bert Church High School in Airdrie has been invited to represent Alberta at the 2019 Special Olympics Ontario Invitational International Youth Games.  It's the second year that Bert Church has received the honour and this time around they'll be out to defend their gold medal that was won last year in bocce.

The group will leave for Toronto tomorrow (May 13) and be in Ontario to take part in the games from May 14th to 17th.  Bert Church Learning Support teacher Cynthia Dahl says seven international regions will be represented at the games this year making them the first international sports competition for high school-aged students, with and without intellectual disabilities.

Bert Church High School has embraced the Unified Sports model since starting four years ago.  In 2017 the school received the honour of being named Unified School of the Year for Alberta.  Dahl says the feeling that all the athletes receive when they take part in Unified Sports really can't be described.

"The atmosphere when we're doing it.  We practice all year and the students love practicing bocce and bean bag toss and basketball and playing with the different partner players.  When we had the teams here it was just such an exciting, welcoming, everyone's having fun participating in sport together.  It's just such a great feeling."

The teams Dahl refers to are teams that came for a Unified Jamboree at the school in April.  More than 200 students from Rocky View and Calgary took part in the day of fun.

When Dahl is asked, 'who gets the most out of Unified Sports?  The Special Olympics kids or their playing partners," she answers, "That's a tough question."

I think both really benefit and enjoy it," says Dahl.  "I know that the students who are the Special Olympics athletes just love participating, they love going and they love when the partners come and play with them.  When I talk to the partners we often get them wanting to participate in multiple sports through the school year because they enjoy playing and they just get such benefit out of it for coming and participating."

This year's group of students includes two who were on the gold medal-winning bocce team last year and two new members.  The team is made up of  Emma Rockwell, Jayden Riley, Colter Cannon, and Ami Schaan.  Physical Education and Career and Technology teacher Ian Ferguson is also going along for the trip.

Two other Alberta schools will also be representing the province.  L.Y. Cairns School from Edmonton and Strathcona High School will send a combined basketball team comprised of athletes and partners from both schools.  

Unified Sports was launched in 2016 in high schools across Alberta through a partnership between Special Olympics Alberta and the Alberta Schools Athletic Association.

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