Vermont School Turns Unified Sports Into Championship Culture

From Fansided:

"It got started probably eight years ago because a group of students went to a leadership conference in Indianapolis," said Julie Crosier, Assistant Athletic Director at Burr and Burton Academy and coach of their Unified Basketball team. "They came back to me and said, 'we need this Unified Basketball thing in our school.'"

Crosier and four of her players are sitting on a circle of soft pleather benches on the second floor of the University of Minnesota Recreation and Wellness Center. They've all traveled here, more than 1,200 miles, from tiny Bennington, Vermont to compete in the 2026 Special Olympics USA Games. The players are still sweaty and red-faced, having just beaten a team from Idaho in their opening game in the Interscholastic Division.

The coach admitted that, at the time those students first approached her, she didn't even know what Unified Sports were. (It's a Special Olympics program that brings together athletes with and without disabilities to compete side by side.) Crosier was willing to give it a try but wanted to go slowly. Her student leaders, on the other hand, wanted to push the pedal to the floor — we're going to join the league, we're doing to have a team, we need to get uniforms, we're going to do this.

"One of the students that went [to the leadership conference], he actually served as the coach," said Crosier. "For his senior class, I think he was the top athlete so everybody looked up to him. He would wear a suit and tie to games, and then he would drive his car to [his own] baseball [practice] because it was so important for him to get this started."

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