Salem High celebrates 'Unified Champion' honor

Salem News - 9/27/2022

Sep. 27—SALEM — It's the home of the Witches, but Salem High School is now also the home of the unified champions.

Special Olympics Massachusetts announced this month that Salem High School was one of 12 schools, out of more than 250 in the state, to receive the "National Banner Recognition" under the Unified Champion School program. The designation celebrates Salem's recent implementation of the program, which includes the Witch Mix club and a unified physical education class that just began at Salem High this fall.

The honor will bring a banner to Salem High marking the school's successes in bringing together students with and without intellectual disabilities, and in so doing, move all students forward. And this is only several months after first launching the Salem program earlier this year.

But it's about so much more than a banner and inclusive team sports that strive for a one-to-one ratio of students with and without disabilities.

"It has helped me understand people, no matter where they come from; ethnicity, race, age, whatever it is," said Anexaly Trinidad, a volleyball player who joined by invitation. "Coach G actually invited me one day when I was sitting in the hallway by myself. I definitely wanted to do it... I was just unsure how to communicate and struggled a little bit at first, with the social aspect of it. At first it was hard."

Jayden Lopez, another student in the program, joined for a love of track. He'll leave Salem High with so much more, he explained.

"My heart started to beat when I did the 400," Lopez said, his expression exploding as he slid to the edge of his seat. "All the running I did... it gave me a kind of kindness, a kind of love. Witch Mix gave me the power of friendship, and it got me to a point where I made new friends in the school, a lot of good friends in unified sports.

"I'm a champion, of course," Lopez continued. "I'll always be a champion, even if I'm not a champion."

'Mix'-ing it up

Salem High implemented the Special Olympics' Unified Champion school program in January, according to Angie Giancola, a JV volleyball coach and On-Track facilitator at Salem High.

"The Unified Champion school model is a three-tier model where we see inclusion infused through whole-school engagement, inclusive youth leadership and unified sports," Giancola said. "For a school to be considered a 'Unified Champion' school, or for a district to be a Unified Champion school district, they need to meet criteria in all three of those ways."

The unified sports aspect of the program is perhaps its most visible, no surprise given the Special Olympics' role in creating the program. Students both with and without disabilities are able to compete in seasons of unified athletics, which in Massachusetts partners with the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, or MIAA.

"We started off strong with a strength and conditioning season, which all happens in-house and then scores are sent to the MIAA," Giancola said. "In track and field, in the spring, it's interscholastic. We literally competed against Swampscott, then we went to sectionals and competed against a bunch of teams."

Basketball has been a major driver in Salem's unified sports program. There are currently 38 students signed up, but not all as athletes.

"Our goal, as the unified sports program, is we want it to be a meaningful experience for any student with or without a disability who wants to participate," Giancola said. "If a student wants to be involved and is passionate about cheerleading, we're going to connect them, and it's going to be helping that student.

"This movement is larger than just unified sports," Giancola said. "Of course, we're asking the question of, 'how can that student lead?' 'How can we have inclusive leadership opportunities?'"

'That's how life is'

Each student that enters the program leaves with something bigger. Take for example Nadia Lebron, a senior eyeing a career in the armed services who joined "because I think the true high school experience is to socialize and include. When I found out about this, I was like... I have to do it."

"It helped shape my high school experience, because it really did push my limits," Lebron said. "I'm learning to adapt to them, and they're learning to adapt to me."

Matthew Mullaney was similarly transformed. He said he's on the autism spectrum and has "always struggled socially, and there was a point I felt sad that nobody respected me, that nobody cared about me."

But once he was in the program, Mullaney questioned whether there was a conspiracy to draft a program tailored to his exact needs.

"They were like, 'No, you aren't the reason we started this,'" Mullaney said, laughing.

The "movement" for unified sports has been building in Salem for years, according to Giancola. That includes other programs in many of Salem's other schools that led to a natural feeling of inclusivity at Salem High when it launched the program in January.

"We have Carlton, Witchcraft, where there are adults at these buildings who have been doing work in unified physical education classes for elementary-aged students," she said. "They're doing this inclusion work that sets a precedent for what we're doing now."

And that, Lopez said, is "how life is, really."

"This has given me passion," he said. "If you fight for freedom through teamwork, teamwork for freedom, you'll get the freedom. If you want to do something, you need to do it as a team."

Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.

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