Southgate Community Schools continues to expand its programming and opportunities for students, with the introduction of Unified Sports to the district. The program is designed to ensure that students with intellectual disabilities will not be shut out of opportunities to play sports.

Special Olympics Unified Sports officially launched globally in 1989, but the concept of "integrated sports" began earlier, with pilot programs in the U.S. in the late 1980s and the influential Project Unify (now Unified Champion Schools) being launched in 2008 to expand the effort in schools.

This program offers a wide variety of team and individual sports, including popular ones like basketball, soccer, flag football, volleyball, bowling, golf, tennis, bocce, swimming, track and field, and table tennis. The goal is to foster inclusion by pairing athletes with and without intellectual disabilities on the same teams for training and competition. The specific sports available can vary by location, season and school/ community programs. For the most part, though, they cover summer, fall and winter activities.

Southgate is offering basketball to start, in hope of expanding programming at a later time. It’s all part of a larger plan spearheaded by Davidson Middle School special education teacher McKenna Tanguay. Now in her third year teaching in Southgate, she joined with new special education director Erica Shovein to get things started.

It was a fast process.“We had our first meeting in November, and our first competition in December,” Tanguay said.The program runs until February.Teams consist of students in grades six-through-12, bucking the nationwide trend of the usual seventhrough-12 model.

“We did open it up to sixth grade, to get more participants to start things off,” Tanguay said.Both male and female students can participate, with the team number at 12 right now. Southgate’s Unified Basketball team plays other Downriver Unified teams, including those from Allen Park, Woodhaven, Wyandotte, Carlson, Taylor and Lincoln Park.

So far, the program has been a hit with both students and their families.

“One of the things parents have said is that they never thought they would get to sit in the bleachers and watch their child and cheer them on,” Tanguay said. “To see them performing, it’s building relationships between the students themselves, and the parents are building relationships with other parents through this.”

The program is filling a gap that was widely felt by parents of students with intellectual challenges, offering them opportunities that weren’t there before.

“The whole district has been very excited about it,” Tanguay said.

One of the most important aspects of Unified Sports is that of the student mentors who volunteer. While not cognitively or intellectually challenged, these students make themselves available through what Tanguay calls the “Peer-to-Peer Program.”

“The Peer-to-Peer program is run at the high school, with students who want to be more involved in special education,” Tanguay said. “They attend some classes together, and build friendships and relationships throughout the day.”

And there’s no shortage of kids who want to be involved.

“Right now we have about 20-30 peers,” Tanguay said.

Tanguay reiterated that she would like to see the program expand from just basketball into bowling in the fall and track in the spring.

For Tanguay, who grew up in Trenton and who played softball at Detroit Mercy, bringing this program into Southgate is a worthy goal that needs to continue to grow and thrive.

“I look forward to building this program, and giving all students a chance,” she said.