At a Friday morning basketball match at Thousand Oaks High School, hundreds of cheering students sit in the bleachers.
But look harder, and you’ll see it’s not just any basketball match. The student who sang the national anthem is blind. And on each team, neurotypical players are playing alongside team members with physical and developmental disabilities.
"Unified Sports is one of the crown jewels of our inclusion efforts," explained Eric Bergmann, the Principal of Thousand Oaks High School. "This is an opportunity for us to really put our efforts around inclusion, making sure that all students, not just are participating, but are actively involved in all of our school events."
The school is one of just 45 nationwide recognized for its commitment to inclusion by ESPN and Special Olympics, and one of just 3 to get this in-person celebration.
"Inclusion is not just a nice-to-have goal that looks good on a poster. It defines our culture, and it is exhibited through our actions and words every day. We spend a good deal of time as a faculty and a community in this school trying to identify what barriers exist and how we can remove them so, again, every kid can have a full high school experience," said Bergmann.
Celebrity team coaches are encouraging each side, with Christopher Schwarzenegger — he’s the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, and his grandmother Eunice, who is JFK’s sister, founded the Special Olympics — rallying the away side, Westlake High School.
"I've been involved with it since I was born. When you're born into [the Shriver] family, you're born into the Special Olympics, that's for sure," said Schwarzenegger.
He said inclusivity is more important now than ever.
"I think it's probably more important than ever nowadays. I think the world is fractured, and people are looking for a community. Inclusivity is at the heart of the mission, and that's unified sports, which is why we're here today, that's what that's all about," said Schwarzenegger.
Special Olympics Southern California President and CEO, Kelly Pond, said that unified sports, which include all abilities, is an important way to foster school climates of acceptance.
"Special Olympics provides year-round sports training and athletic competition to children and adults with intellectual disabilities and one of our programs is Unified Champion School Program where students with and without intellectual disabilities participate in activities together including doing unified rallies, unified sports, unified PE, all activities where individuals with and with intellectual disability is going to participate together creating meaningful friendship," said Pond.
"We're removing barriers of differences and really finding things that they have in common. And this event is just the epitome of that experience. A unified champion school, ESPN banner school, is basically the ultimate way a unified champion school can perform. So this is a huge honor and a huge opportunity for us to show other schools what it means to be unified," said Pond.
As for the game? It was a closely competitive match, where the taking part is a win for all. But Thousand Oaks narrowly won, with 31 points to the guest team, Westlake High School's 30.
