Basketball is one of the top sports for Special Olympics Washington. Players take it up at all ages and at all abilities, from young players learning to handle the ball and keep it under control while dribbling to older, more experienced players who have the moves and know the strategies to play challenging ball. We offer team events as well as individual skills competitions that help athletes train and compete in basic basketball skills before advancing to team play.
It is also one of the favorite sports for the Special Olympics Unified Sports initiative, when players with and without intellectual disabilities form teams to play other unified teams. It’s a learning experience that brings together communities and helps foster a spirit of inclusion.
What is Unified Sports?
Dedicated to promoting social inclusion through shared sports training and competition experiences, Unified Sports joins people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team. It was inspired by a simple principle: training together and playing together is a quick path to friendship and understanding.
In Unified Sports, teams are made up of people of similar age and ability, which makes practices more fun and games more challenging and exciting for all. Having sport in common is just one more way that preconceptions and false ideas are swept away.
Our opponent is intolerance. Only shoulder-to-shoulder, as teammates together, can we defeat it.