Pictured at the recent Buccaneer Unified Club Sports (BUCS) game in which both regular and special education, intellectually disabled students played together as teammates are (standing, left to right) Nick Arnone, Lauren Keale, Zoey Kallerher, Michael Eulner, Stephen Navitzky; (kneeling) Sarah Keale and Diana Santamaria Delgado.

Press release from Red Bank Regional High School

This past year, Red Bank Regional High School Athletic Director Del DalPra was able to secure a $3,500 grant from the Special Olympics Organization with the aim of becoming a Special Olympics Unified School.

RBR joins over 4,300 middle and high schools in the United States which have adopted this program, in which able-bodied kids play side by side with special education children who are intellectually disabled. According to the Unified Olympic website, “Unified Sports is also an integral part of the Special Olympics Unified Strategy for Schools, which was founded in 2008 and funded through the U.S. Department of Education to use Special Olympics as a way to build inclusion and tolerance in schools.”

The winter basketball program included eight special education students from the school’s “self-contained” program, and 18 regular education students. All were equal participants in the program and all had an equally great time playing a competitive basketball game every Tuesday night over the past two months. The name of the team, BUCS, is an appropriate acronym for Buccaneer Unified Club Sports.

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