Norwin’s Unified Bocce Team kicked off their season on December 12 against PT, a new season of great competition and memories started.
According to the Unified Sports website, “Special Olympics Unified Sports® creates an opportunity for people without intellectual disabilities to join in the sports experience by playing on a team with athletes with intellectual disabilities. Not only do the players all have fun, but attitude change and transformation happens on the playing field and the experiences create lifelong friendships. Unified Sports® combines approximately equal numbers of Special Olympics Athletes and athletes without intellectual disabilities (called Partners) on sports teams for training and competition. Age and ability matching of athletes and partners is defined on a sport-by-sport basis. The concept of combining athletes with intellectual disabilities and those without was first introduced in the mid-1980s to provide another level of challenge for higher ability athletes and to promote equality and inclusion.”
This season the Knights are coached by Special Education teachers Ms. Kristen Sweeney and Mrs. Tiffany Haraburda. Both coaches have had their athletes working hard with practices every Monday and Wednesday. All of this hard work has gone towards having a fun and successful season.
”I look forward to being able to work together as a team and have a lot of fun,” Coach Sweeney said.
The Knights had their first series of matches. on December 12 against Penn Trafford. The first of the Knight’s teams had a slow start letting Penn Trafford take a 2-0 lead. Each match consists of multiple teams from each school competing and the scores the scores are merged at the end. Then with a clutch performance from Norwin players Eli Passarelli and Autumn Serembo the Knights were able to come back to make the score 2-2. With more back and forth in the match the Knights were able to keep up the scoring despite missing some of their key teammates. The Knights team finished up the match with a win and a score of 6-4 to start their season strong.
“Unified Bocce gives me the chance to make friends,” said Eli Passarelli. “My favorite part about the sport is being able to have fun with my friends.”
In the second and final match of the night Norwin was on fire starting of the scoring immediately. Alina Harrigan , and Angelina Angelcyk put points up on the board for the Knights. Penn Trafford kept the fight up in the first couple of frames, but soon after the Knights took off and proceeded to win the game with a score of 9-3. No tiebreaker would be needed because the Knights swept Penn Trafford for a successful first meet of the season.
”I am most excited to see how well everyone does in the game and works together,” said Coach Sweeney. “It’s also really great to look how we improve over the season.”
