By Taylor Nigrelli
Sports Editor
Thursday, St. Bonaventure students joined local law enforcement agents, high school students, Special Olympic athletes and others for the 2014 Law Enforcement torch run to honor late state trooper Ross M. Riley.
Riley, an Allegany native, was killed in a rappelling training exercise in November.
Olean is just one of many communities that hosts one of these events as the Special Olympics torch moves through various communities throughout the state on its way to the annual summer games, held in Buffalo this year.
The run began at Lincoln Park in downtown Olean and went all the way down to the Reilly Center.
This led runners to the Special Olympics Unified Basketball Tournament, which was held at the Reilly and Richter centers. This tournament featured students with and without disabilities from Olean-area elementary schools.
This type of event now seems commonplace at St. Bonaventure. But that was not always the case.
St. Bonaventure and Special Olympics New York first crossed paths in 1979 when the school hosted the Special Olympic summer games.
The school didn’t involve itself in Special Olympic affairs until quite a while after those games. Then, roughly seven years ago, Special Olympics New York resident and St. Bonaventure alumnus Neal Johnson approached athletic director Steve Watson about involving St. Bonaventure student athletes in Special Olympic events.
“The year Steve Watson was appointed athletic director, I came through the campus one day, and I stopped in and talked to Watson,” Johnson said. “I explained who I was, that I was an alumni and that I thought it would be wonderful if we could get the student athletes involved with some Special Olympic events.”
Watson forwarded Johnson’s information to Paula Scraba, associate professor of physical education, who had experience and expertise in working with athletes with disabilities.
“My Ph.D. from UConn is in special physical education,” Scraba said. “My work is with severe disabilities. My mentor at UConn helped Eunice Kennedy Shriver start the first games at Soldier Field in 1968. Consequently, Special Olympics was always a part of my training and my background. No matter what state I’m in, I always end up working with Special Olympics.”
The partnership between the school and Special Olympics New York began with some clinics. The women’s soccer team has hosted a clinic for Special Olympic athletes for at least four years, according to Johnson. The men’s and women’s basketball teams have participated in a spring clinic for the past three years. Next year, the school will expand the program to the Reilly Center pool for an aquatics clinic, as the men’s and women’s swimming teams have expressed interest in participating.
“It caught on like wildfire,” Scraba said. “It’s not that the athletes are doing it because they have to do it. They’re really getting into it.”
Because of the success of the coach’s clinics, the school began to host unified tournaments, like on Thursday.
According to Scraba, the unified tournaments at St. Bonaventure began after Special Olympics New York approached The United Way to see if they qualified for funding. The United Way representative told them they’d need to put on a youth program to qualify. Thus, the unified basketball tournament was born.
The event features school children from Olean, Allegany and Hinsdale elementary schools. Disabled children from each school are paired with regularly-abled children to make up several teams. Each team has a mentor – someone who knows basketball well.
The first such tournament took place in 2013. Scraba said it had an effect on how disabled children were received at school.
“These students that would kind of walk around with their heads down, suddenly come back from this Unified competition and their heads are held high,” Scraba said. “They walk down the hallway and people say ‘hello’ to them.”
Both Scraba and Johnson expressed pleasure in seeing how participation in events such as these has spread from student athletes to all types of student organizations.
“It’s gone beyond just the student athletes,” Johnson said. “There are a lot of groups getting involved, including the student athletes. Its students all over the campus of all majors and disciplines.”
