Sudbury Special Olympic athletes make national teams - Cheryl Bruce

Special Olympics is a worldwide program providing sports training and competition for people with an intellectual disability.

Dr. Frank Hayden was one of the founders and each year at our annual conference in Toronto he comes to talk. He is a fantastic man, for without him, many of us, including me, would not have been given these opportunities.

Here in Sudbury, any individual, eight years of age or older, who has an intellectual disability, is welcome to participate in Special Olympics Sudbury. Some of the individual sports can accept younger children.

Being involved in Special Olympics helps us get physically fit. It teaches us different sports, their basic rules, and if we want, allows us to compete at meets. We compete against other athletes from different towns and cities and it is always a blast. With Special Olympics, we have the chance to get involved in something that makes us part of an organization, and it helps to build our self-esteem.

Then we have our socials that we all love, and boy do we dance up a storm.

Our families and caregivers get involved, too. Some even volunteer to be coaches and assistants in some of the sports. They are out there cheering us on, bringing us to practices and I am sure enjoy meeting other families in the area who they can share stuff with. We all become one big happy family.

Congratulations go out to our soccer club who went to the provincials in Windsor in July. You made us proud with your second-place finishing.

Our track and field stars also were down in Windsor this past summer and they came home with an armful of medals. Congratulations to Ryan Normand, Ashley Kennaway and Amanda Mainville. Well done.

Special Olympics recently announced the first list of athletes and coaches named to Team Ontario for the 2010 National Summer Games, which will be held in London July 11-18. More than 1,400 athletes, coaches and mission staff will be in attendance for the event. The National Summer Games are also a qualifying event for the 2011 World Summer Games to be held in Greece.

For bowling, Mattieu Gervais made the national team, and for swimming, there are five Sudbury athletes on the team, including myself, Josee Seguin, Jason Blais, Roger Paquette and Rosie Falvo.

This is a great accomplishment for any team!

Cheryl Bruce is an athlete ambassador for the northeast region of the Special Olympics in Ontario. This is the third in a series of six columns appearing in Northern Life.