Unified Sports

Team sports bring people together but young people with disabilities do not often get a chance to play on their school sports teams. Special Olympics Unified Sports® teams do that and much more.

Special Olympics Unified Sports® is a model that promotes social inclusion. Unified Sports integrates individuals with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities on teams for sport training and competition to promote social engagement and development. It was inspired by a simple principle: training together and playing together is a quick path to friendship and understanding.

In Unified Sports, teams are made up of people of similar age and ability. That makes practices more fun and games more challenging and exciting for all. Having sport in common is just one more way that preconceptions and false ideas are swept away.

Unified Sports includes approximately equal numbers of Special Olympics athletes and typically developing partners on the playing field for both individual and team sports. All athletes and partners are recognized as equal contributors and as such develop a sense of belonging, learn to interact meaningfully with others, and forge lasting and mutually rewarding relationships beyond the playing field.

Chapters are also adopting Special Olympics’ Project Unify, an education-based project that uses sports and education programs to activate young people to develop school communities where all youth are agents of change.

Special Olympics Unified Sports in Canada does not currently include a competitive pathway to the Special Olympics Canada National Games or to the Special Olympics World Games.