Best Bocce Buddies
There was a big turnout for the Butler High School Unified Sports Bocce Team's match against Moniteau High School.
Nearly 60 student members of the Butler Middle School chapter of Best Buddies packed the stands Feb. 15 to cheer on the Butler bocce team, which is made up of athletes both with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Amanda Rekich, a speech therapist for Butler Middle School and adviser of the middle school’s chapter of Best Buddies, said Best Buddies is an international organization that encourages and fosters friendships between people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities.
According to Best Buddies, students with intellectual or developmental disabilities are often isolated and left out of social activities. Best Buddies chapters in middle schools work to create an inclusive middle school culture for all students.
“This is going to be an outing,” said Rekich of last week’s trip to the bocce match. “We’re going to be coming early and doing activities and get pumped up for the match.” The Best Buddies members arrived before the bocce contest at the senior high and went to the cafeteria where they had snacks and met members of the senior high Best Buddies chapter who were making signs.
Rekich said this was the first field trip for the middle school students since the school year.
“ This is the last home meet for the season for Butler's Special Olympics team,” Rekich said. “The members are made up of students with and without disabilities. There are a lot of great students that participate, senior athletes who are committed to college.”
BHS junior Samantha Cornell has been a member of the senior high Best Buddies chapter for the past two years.
“The program pairs peers with those with intellectual disabilities for one-on-one friendships. We have activities and parties throughout the year,” Samantha said. The senior high chapter has 120 members.
“We have a pretty good amount of people who want to participate every year,” she said. “We don’t have too much trouble getting people.”
Noelle Sequite, a Best Buddies adviser and middle school life skills support teacher, said the outing was an opportunity for chapter members to get to know one another outside the school environment.
The Best Buddies club at the middle school pairs students together.
Leech said Best Buddies builds one-on-one friendships between people with and without disabilities, which will increase inclusion, and build meaningful connections with peers.
Once the pairs get to spend time together, said Sequite, “They find they are more alike than they are different.”
In addition to outings such as attending the bocce match, Sequite said the middle school chapter tries to meet at least once a month.
“They email back and forth. They make an effort to communicate outside of the activities,” she added.
Michelle Yeager, one of the coaches of the two bocce teams the high school fields, said the unified bocce team can consist of up to eight members each on two teams made up equally of four players with disabilities and four players without disabilities.
Bocce is a game where each player rolls a ball trying to get closest to a yellow ball called a pallino to score points.
Each match consists of three games. Each game is won by the team that scores 16 points first or is ahead when each game's 30-minute time limit expires.
Last week’s match, which Butler won, was the fourth for Butler which plays against teams from Moniteau, Slippery Rock, Knoch, Seneca Valley and Moniteau.
