Providing Opportunities for Success Through Competition

Please take a moment to read this article from the Democrat & Chronicle and watch the attached video.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060224/SPORTS0102/602240373/1007/SPORTS

I recently had the pleasure of watching my youngest sister Emily compete in the NJCAA Women's Division III National Soccer Championship. For several weekends my family and I drove back and forth from NJ to Upstate NY to different campuses to support what had been a way of life at our house for over a decade - women's soccer. They won the National Championship and Emily, with three goals (two in the final) was voted the tournament MVP. As you can well imagine, the level of pride and admiration we feel for her and for her hard work is immense.
While at the tournament, my other sister told me about a story from Rochester, NY where a young man with ASD named J-Mac scored twenty points in the final basketball game of the season at Greece-Athena HS.
Before I lose you, let me just say that I am not going to write about how J-Mac should be an inspiration to people with disabilities or to care providers. That pretty much goes without saying. Instead, I want to ask a question. How do we provide people - people with disabilities, their families, whoever -with the opportunity to experience even a fraction of what J-Mac and his family felt in those four minutes back in 2006? I know that for most of us (probably all of us reading this) the opportunity to score the game winning goals or drain six 3's in a HS basketball game is long gone. For the people we support, those opportunities are not readily available either. In fact, I would be willing to bet that 99% of the people that we support and their families have not had an experience like J-Mac's or Emily's. Not because of the lack of ability or desire, but perhaps due to the lack of opportunity. Again, I know that we aren't going to be playing in a national championship game, but there are plenty of venues for providing a level of competition or challenge to people that might otherwise never experience the exhilaration of a three point basket or a touchdown.
It can be done. In the last three years I have seen and heard from people with significant physical and cognitive disabilities and/or TBI who have had the opportunity to hunt, fish, swim, surf, climb ropes courses, race, wrestle, and on and on....The benefits of healthy competition on the personal, social, and emotional development of the human mind can't be measured or quantified, but the positive results are as plain as day. Look at J-Mac. That video looks like any one of a thousand grainy high school sports tapes, and if you didn't know that number 52 was on the autism spectrum, you would swear you were looking at the next point guard for the Nets. We can't know, as J-mac's family couldn't have known, what level someone will rise to if they are challenged properly. However, if we provide the venue, who knows? Maybe he or she will take the shot. Or six of them....