Wednesday, Apr 8, 2015
Special Olympics Athletes team up with college students From nine New Jersey colleges
On Sunday, April 12, Rider University will host the second annual College Unified Sports Shriver Cup Basketball Tournament, where Special Olympics New Jersey athletes team up with college students to compete on a team together.
The colleges represented at this tournament include Drew University, Georgian Court University, Montclair University, Rider University, Rowan College at Gloucester County, Rowan University, Rutgers University, Stockton University and The College of New Jersey.
Each school has hosted a multi-team league on campus for five to eight weeks leading up to the tournament. From these leagues, each school then created a team to represent them in the Shriver Cup.
Special Olympics has offered Unified Sports for more than 20 years, but in recent years, the program in New Jersey has seen an influx of interest among young people. Unified Sports brings together athletes with and without intellectual disabilities, called partners, on sports teams to train and compete side-by-side, each one a meaningful and equal part of the team.
This will be Rider University’s first time hosting this tournament.
“We are really excited to host the Shriver Cup at Rider,” says Molly Podosek, Rider’s Unified Sports Club president. “Our club has many dedicated that love to play Unified Sports. We have really created a sense of teamwork with our athletes and I know they are just as excited as we are.”
In addition to the colleges competing, two high schools, Hamilton West and Old Bridge, will perform a demonstration game, showing that Unified Sports has a place in all schools in New Jersey.
