SLAM faculty, students team up for community event with Special Olympics of Ohio
Over 30 Miamians collaborated on the basketball and wellness clinic for Edgewood student athletes
SLAM faculty, students team up for community event with Special Olympics of Ohio
Over 30 Miamians collaborated on the basketball and wellness clinic for Edgewood student athletes
Over 60 Edgewood School District athletes from elementary through high school took part in a one-day basketball and wellness clinic Oct. 16, an event put on by Miami University’s Department of Sport Leadership and Management in collaboration with Special Olympics of Ohio.
Thirty undergraduate and graduate students from SLAM and across the College of Education, Health, and Society worked alongside faculty and Special Olympics of Ohio staff to deliver safe and inclusive, age-appropriate programming.
Amanda Kaufman, coordinator of the Physical Activity Program and Internships for SLAM, and Sean Seiler, visiting assistant professor in the department, led the clinic, which culminated almost a year of groundwork and monthly meetings.
“Special Olympics of Ohio reached out to the SLAM department last spring in need of student volunteers for one of their local events,” Kaufman said. “I immediately knew there would be potential for an ongoing relationship and looped in Dr. Seiler, who had prior experience with Special Olympics of Georgia as a powerlifting coach.”
The two volunteered for the track-and-field event at Wittenberg University in late May and stayed in contact with Special Olympics of Ohio throughout the summer with monthly meetings that included Zoe Hopkins, manager of health strategies; Nate Elfreich, manager of Unified Champion City Schools; and Paul Tomasulo, manager of sports and competition for the Southwest Region of Ohio.
At the July meeting, Tomasulo noted that service infrastructure in southwest Ohio lags behind other parts of the state and that one of the organization's goals is to improve its program offerings to better integrate the region. This comment opened the door to a new series of conversations beyond the need for student volunteers, exploring a partnership between SLAM and Special Olympics of Ohio that led to the one-day basketball and wellness clinic.
“We [Kaufman and Seiler] had a few things in mind as we considered the basketball component of the program,” Seiler said. “We had to settle the distance between the background of the athletes and identifying appropriate drills. This is important for any program: knowing the athletes. Knowing the athletes' ages, abilities, and needs lets you be pragmatic about what you offer.”
Seiler went on to add: “We also wanted to make this a collaborative space between faculty and students. We knew students in SLAM and across the university had some combination of basketball and Special Olympics experience, so early in the planning, we committed to empowering students in this space by facilitating stations and taking on leadership roles. And, last, we wanted the athletes to feel like athletes stepping foot on a Division I college campus. Resources are always going to be limited, but that means you just have to be creative.”
The athletes were placed in one of five groups of 12-15, alongside support persons, which included ASL interpreters, high schoolers in the Best Buddies program, and staff from the Edgewood School District. The athletes then rotated between stations after 20 minutes. Two students remained with each group at all times to ensure smooth transitions between stations and build connections between the athletes and support persons.
In elaborating on this structure, Seiler said: “The event itself was only two hours, which is not a lot of time to build a connection between us and the athletes. So, we wanted to make sure we had two students with a group at all times to bridge that gap.”
The clinic featured six stations: three skill-based drill stations, a health and wellness station, a sensory station, and a quiet room. Faculty and students led the drill stations, which focused on fundamental basketball skills: shooting, passing, and dribbling.
Hopkins, manager of health strategies for Special Olympics of Ohio, led the health and wellness station, and the sensory room featured games and assorted activities, including a custom t-shirt design activity. The custom T-shirt design activity and student-designed event badges were the highlight of the day, according to participants, along with singing happy birthday to Bailey Giuffre, an undergraduate student in SLAM who volunteered as the event photographer, and two birthday cakes for everyone to enjoy.
“SLAM is relationship-focused and community-oriented, and it is important to realize that ethic in all our activities, from community partners to our students across the touchpoints of the department whether in the classroom, studying away, or the experiential learning opportunities we provide,” Seiler said.
This ethic of care extends into the Oxford community, too. Kaufman, Seiler, and Pitt Strasser, a visiting graduate student from Luxembourg this semester, transported leftover Jersey Mike’s sandwiches provided by Special Olympics of Ohio for lunch to Talawanda Oxford Pantry and Social Services (TOPSS).
“Food insecurity is a major issue in the surrounding community,” Seiler said. “We try to take advantage of opportunities when we can to put fresh food on the table for those in the TOPSS network.”
Summing up the event, Kaufman said: “What we put together on [Oct. 16] was not only an amazing experiential learning opportunity for our SLAM students, but this is only the beginning of our collaboration between SLAM and Special Olympics of Ohio. Our goal is to fill the programming gap for Special Olympics athletes in southwestern Ohio, so stay tuned. We have some exciting stuff planned.”