Submitted Photo Above, members of the Fredonia Unified bowling team pose for a picture with signs cheering on the team.

The Unified Bowling league has found its way to both Fredonia and Silver Creek High Schools beginning this season.

Partnered with the Special Olympics, Unified sports gives students a chance to compete in a select few sports that they otherwise may not be able to compete in. 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 league gives an opportunity for students with and without disabilities to participate in sports together,” said Kristin Tomaszewski, who is a teacher at Fredonia High School, and also was part of the group who brought Unified Bowling to Fredonia.

Tomaszewski serves as the advisor to the Youth Activation Committee (YAC), making it her job to build buzz for the events around the community, and to optimize the involvement of both the school and the community outside the school.

The process to get the team approved was more of a “formality,” Tomaszewski said. While Fredonia’s Athletic Director, Greg Lauer, still had to get Fredonia’s involvement in the league formally approved, both Tomaszewski and coach Alex Conti knew people would be on board.

“Once Lauer took the proposal to the board, everything happened rather quickly,” Tomaszewski said. “Alex (Conti) and I have both wanted this, and we already knew the students we’d want to have involved. It really was just the formality of getting it approved.”

Much like the process to get Fredonia a team, the process of getting the community involved has been just as quick. The home matches for Fredonia, played at Lucky Lanes, have gotten a good amount of attendance, and all the students involved seem to be having a good time on their new team.

“It’s been hugely positive,” Tomaszewski said. “We have kids asking every day if they can join, with and without disabilities, and the kids that are here have a great contagious energy.”

Fredonia’s goal is to become what’s known as a ‘banner school.’ In order for a school to become a banner school, they have to meet a couple different qualifications. One of those things is having special community days to advertise for the teams, such as a pep assembly.

“We have to have a school community day, and we have to do school wide events,” Tomaszewski said. “We have something planned called ‘Spread the Word: Inclusion Day,’ which will be in March, where we’ll have the kids do special activities to help spread the word.”

The other big qualification before becoming a banner school — which is a school recognized for outstanding participation in Unified Sports — is to have more than one team. That’s also in the works at Fredonia, who will welcome Unified Basketball beginning in May of this year.

“The kids involved with basketball will be a lot of the same kids,” Tomaszewski said. “The group we have now is a solid foundation, and the kids are forming relationships and friendships, but we’re open to inviting as many kids as are interested.”

Tomaszewski said that they plan to have a few fundraisers before basketball begins to help the program thrive overall and to help build awareness.

With the team in place, Fredonia needed someone to coach the kids, which is where Conti stepped in. In fact, Conti was on board from the beginning.

While Unified Sports has been a part of Section VI for five years, it’s something that Fredonia only learned about recently, and it was Conti who first got the ball rolling, and handed it off to Lauer to get the team started. Conti knew he wanted to be on board from the start.

“This is an opportunity for students that don’t normally get to be a part of a competitive team to be on a competitive team, Conti said. “I have all these students in my class anyway, it’s meaningful to me and it’s long overdue for this. I’m glad that we’ve got a partnership with Special Olympics and I’m glad we have this moving forward.”

Outside of the personal meaning, Conti is looking forward to showing the rest of the community how great these students are.

“People will get the opportunity to see just how special and important everybody is to each other and this is a way to bridge that,” Conti said.

The process for Silver Creek school was similar to the one Fredonia went through, down to the fact that this is the first season of Unified Bowling in Silver Creek.

Silver Creek is new to the program, in it’s inaugural season in 2020, and similar to Fredonia, the program has been meet with optimism and inclusion from the student body.

“It’s really brough the school together,” said Silver Creek Special Ed. teacher and Co-Coach of the team, Janet Decker. “The students and team absolutely love it. Often times Special Ed students are left outside and viewed as different. People are afraid to say the wrong thing and interact with them, what’s come from this program is everyone being accepting of everyone.”

Being a Special Ed teacher, Decker has spent a lot of the time with the athletes of the team, and has noticed in the hallways the impact the team has had in such a short time.

“People recognize my students in the hallways now,” Decker said. “The Gen. Ed. students high five them in the hall, ask them how their day is going, and everyone just feels like a part of the school. They’re not ‘Mrs. Decker’s class’ anymore, they’re just Silver Creek students.”

One hurdle that Silver Creek experienced initially was the desired involvement of the partners up front.

“When we were trying to get partners, some of the Gen. Ed students were apprehensive,” Decker said. “They were wondering how my kids were going to receive them, but what everyone realized was we’re all the same. We’re all just trying to be accepted for who we are, and that brought the whole thing together.”

And the students have now been performing, both partners and athletes. Much like Fredonia, Silver Creek’s partners are several of the athletes on the Black Knights teams, including a handful of football players and cross country runners — including Decker’s daughter, Ellie. And in some cases, the Unified athletes are doing better than the others.

“I’ve had some of the athletes get higher scores than the partners,” Decker said. “It’s so nice to see partners react and encourage each other.”

While Silver Creek is also adding basketball in the spring, Decker would like to see some other schools in the surrounding area get involved in Unified Sports. Given the fact that the program is so new, it hasn’t quite made its way into the southern tier yet, with the team having to travel to the Buffalo area rather frequently to play their matches.

“I’d like to see Unified Bowling expand,” Decker said. “We’ve had to travel to Cheektowaga, West Seneca, and Eden, but Salamanca has to travel to Buffalo too. It would be great to see other schools on board, you don’t need a huge amount of kids.”

One issue that Silver Creek has faced in trying to start up is that they have not had a home match yet, as both previously scheduled matches were cancelled. While Decker said that the expected turnout should be good, considering the feedback from the community and how well the parents travelled all around, the team has one final chance for a home match on Feb. 27, which is when the Fredonia team will travel to Hanover Lanes. The matchup between the only two teams in the surrounding area will hopefully be a spark for some of the other schools in Chautauqua County to consider coming together.