General education students, referred to as partners, from the schools buddy up with a special education student, the athletes form a team — in this case, to team bowl. The bowling season last year saw its completion, but the basketball season that was planned to follow it was cut short by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite things looking a little different, both Silver Creek and Fredonia have returned to the lanes for Unified Bowling, with Fredonia in particular seeing a large increase in the amount of kids participating.

“I think we had 24 students last year and we have 50 this year,” said Kristin Tomaszewski, a Fredonia teacher, and a member of the group responsible for bringing Unified Sports to Fredonia. “The kids are excited and want to be a part of it.”

Last year after school was shut down, Fredonia students participated in the “Pass It On” challenge, which was a video put together to raise awareness for Unified Sports, and this year the school, between all the buildings, held a theme week named “Spread the Word: Inclusion.” This sort of spirit week had a different theme for each day, with Monday being Hero Day, Tuesday being Pajama Day, Wednesday being Jersey Day, Thursday being Mismatch Day, and Friday being a Day to wear Red, signifying the need to stop hurtful language. The week was a huge hit at Fredonia with the entire student body and staff, as banners were made and hung around the school.

Silver Creek team members include, in back: Troy Cooper, Damian Molina-Ruiz, Hunter Prinzbach, Joshua Dietzen, and Dominic Kemp. In center are: Emma Romanik, Ellen Decker, Emily Bowers, Ella Monaco, Autumn Gregory, and Renee Soggs. In front are Nina Delmonte and Julie Decker.

“All the students signed a banner, and some of them signed a pledge, where they were given the prompt ‘I choose to include because…,’ ” said Tomaszewski. “We’re trying to get kids to become more aware of what inclusion looks, feels, and sounds like.”

Fredonia is on their way to becoming a banner school for Unified, which are schools identified by the Special Olympics as outstanding programs. Currently there are only nine schools in New York that are banner schools, and Fredonia is on the fast track to hit all of the criteria. Tomaszewski thinks that they just need another year of success under their belt.

“The Special Olympics identifies these schools and wants to make sure they’re self sustainable to maintain the three components of Sports, School Engagement, Leadership,” Tomaszewski said. “We’re pretty close, but they look at how much time has been spent developing it.”

In Silver Creek, the numbers for participation are down only because a lot of the qualifying students graduated after last year. But Silver Creek teacher and co-coach of the bowling team Janet Decker said that more than half of the participants this year are freshman, but that the numbers are harder because some people are still remote.

“It’s a little harder because some people are fully virtual and can’t get to school on their day off,” Decker said. “Hopefully as we move forward next year with vaccines and such, we do better next year. But we’re happy we’re having a season.”

Joshua Dietzen and Autumn Gregory prepare to bowl with the Silver Creek team.

Neither Fredonia nor Silver Creek were optimistic about a season in January, but just a few weeks ago the schools were given the go-ahead to begin, and were sent practice materials, including rubber pins and balls by Special Olympics to help prepare. On top of that, Silver Creek is ensuring that people can still view the matches, even with no one being allowed in person.

“It’s different because everything is virtual,” Decker said. “We bowl in our own lanes and live stream it so parents can watch from home. It’s a lot of fun, and everybody cheers for everybody whether it’s a strike or a gutterball.”

With the bowling season underway for both schools, Fredonia is looking to get basketball underway here in the coming weeks, while Silver Creek is capable of doing basketball as well, and are just waiting to see if they have the numbers to have a program.