By Melissa Moore-Randall
The 2024-2025 Unified Sports season is underway at RHS. The program kicked off their season with a game at home.
This year’s team includes Nathan Brown, Joe Carlo, Gio Cea, Kepler Celamy, Daniel Flores, Juliana Garcia, Yousef Ismail, Brady Kerr, Preston Kimemiah, Eli Marrero, Julia Quiles, Giovanni Rivas, Brendan Sack, Preston Sim, and Stephen Wickens.
The Unified sports program was started by Thomas Mackey, and Kristen Murphy-Cormier who are Life Skills teachers at Revere High School. The mission of the program is the creation of a more inclusive sports culture at Revere High School.
According to the Special Olympics website, “With over a million people worldwide that take part in Unified Sports, breaking down stereotypes about people with intellectual disabilities in a really fun way. ESPN has served as the Global Presenting Sponsor of Special Olympics Unified Sports since 2013, supporting the growth and expansion of this program that empowers individuals with and without intellectual disabilities to engage through the power of sports. Special Olympics is dedicated to promoting social inclusion through shared sports training and competition experiences. Unified Sports joins people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team. It was inspired by a simple principle: training together and playing together is a quick path to friendship and understanding. In Unified Sports, teams are made up of people of similar age and ability. That makes practices more fun and games more challenging and exciting for all. Having sport in common is just one more way that preconceptions and false ideas are swept away.”
Last year, the team traveled to the TD Garden to play in the annual Andrew James Lawson Foundation Invitational The Invitational is hosted by the foundation that was established in memory of Andrew James Lawson, who had Downs Syndrome and died at the young age of 27 after a courageous battle with cancer.
