By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The Sydney Games may be over, but you don’t have to wait
another two years for some Olympic action.
All day this Sunday at the IM field, UCLA Special Olympics will
host its first-ever soccer tournament. Eight teams and more than
100 athletes and coaches will be participating.
“It’s a chance for everyone to put the skills
they’ve been practicing to use,” said UCLA Special
Olympics director and fourth-year French student Lisa Levin.
Three teams hail from the UCLA program, two are from the Los
Angeles area, two are from San Diego, and the last is from
Encino.
The idea for this tournament, which its planners hope will
become an annual event, came shortly after the program hosted its
first-ever basketball tournament in Pauley Pavilion last
spring.
“We’d gotten good responses from the other
tournament,” Levin said.
Games will last 45 minutes. Every team is guaranteed three games
in the preliminary round, and from there, teams advance until only
two make it to the championship game. There will also be a
consolation game.
There will be five players to a team, with two coaches per team
on the field and three athletes. The Special Olympics serve
athletes who live with some form of mental retardation.
These tournaments are part of a larger plan to help the Special
Olympics program at UCLA grow.
“We’re really excited just to keep expanding,”
Levin said. “We’re creating opportunities, broadening
contacts. We are also working on expanding our athlete
pool.”
From the 1998-99 school year to that of 1999-2000, the number of
athletes and coaches in the program doubled.
Fellow director Steven LaFemina, a second-year biochemistry
student, said that this year the interest has been tremendous.
This weekend, 21 of the program’s 50 athletes ““
whose ages range from 15 to 50 ““ are expected to play. There
will also be 20 coaches at the tournament, though the program has
about 40 coaches, who are also UCLA students.
One of the coaches, Bruin alumnus John Hayashi (’92) has
been with the program since he graduated.
“I’ve been able to see the progress of the athletes
as a group,” he said. “The athlete base that we have
here has pretty much stayed the same. To be able to watch them grow
has probably been the most satisfying part.”
Hayashi has seen the nature of the program itself change in one
significant way.
“When I started, the Association of Special Olympics was
more like the volunteer huggers at the finish line,” he
said.
Back then it was all practice for just a few competitions.
“It’s evolved to a more athletic endeavor and
coaches can actually see the end result in the competition,”
Hayashi added.
Two years ago practices only took place two or three times a
quarter, and competitions took place about once a year. Now
practices are every Saturday and UCLA Special Olympics goes to
about five tournaments a year.
That’s why you can find basketball, soccer, softball and
tennis coaches and athletes every weekend.
That’s why the UCLA Special Olympics team will travel as
far away as San Diego to compete in a softball tournament.
That’s why the UCLA program is putting on its own
tournament.
A lot has changed, but the central message of the Special
Olympics hasn’t.
“If they win, they have a sense of satisfaction,”
LaFemina said of Special Olympic athletes. “And if they lose,
they still have a great time.”
This meaning is what keeps the coaches coming back.
“I guess people think they’ll be doing a really good
thing by doing Special Olympics when they join,” LaFemina
said, “but once you get out there, you really love it.
You’re going to want to come back every week.”