Adam Prudhomme
Editor
NDSS hosted its annual Special Olympics regional soccer qualifier on Tuesday, welcoming a pair of schools from Belleville as well as fielding teams of their own.
The tournament, which puts a focus on sportsmanship and inclusion, saw a mix of athletes taking part with a range of abilities.
“We have one traditional team with just students with intellectual disabilities, and then we have two unified squads, which is mainstream students along with our students,” explains Mike Newstead, School to Community teacher with NDSS. “One squad from each qualifier would move on to a provincial championship. Last year it didn’t necessarily mean one traditional and one unified, so I believe in our last year of qualifier it was one traditional team that moved on to the provincial championship, then there’s schools from all over Ontario competing at that, so it’s a pretty big honour and we’ve been lucky to get to that level multiple times. We sent three different teams last year and we won a gold medal in soccer and then we won silver medials in other two sports, those being bocce and floor hockey.”
At this year’s tournament NDSS’ traditional team went undefeated, winning by scores of 6-3, 6-2 and 9-0. They’ll find out later this month if they will advance to the provincial Special Olympics tournament.
Also taking part in the qualifier at NDSS were students from Belleville’s Centennial Secondary School and Eastside Secondary School.
“I think it just comes down to having a great day to get everyone involved and understanding sport,” said Newstead. “Maybe in the past they haven’t had success in sports so this gives our kids an opportunity to get those same opportunities as everyone else and everyone’s having a great time and that’s the number one thing.”