Countywide : Putting a New Spin on the Value of Teamwork

With the help of the Special Olympics of Orange County, some local schools are fielding volleyball teams made up of disabled students and youngsters from mainstream programs--with benefits for both groups.

“It is amazing,” said Gayle Santiago, coach for a team of students from Jordan Secondary Learning Center and Donald S. Jordan Intermediate School in Garden Grove.

“Things we had been trying to teach [the disabled students] for a while--bumps and spikes--just didn’t sink in.” But in the heat of competition, playing side by side with the other students, she said, they catch on immediately.

Santiago’s players went on to beat a team from Buena Park’s Speech and Language Development Center but then lost to a team from Mitchell School, which “has a very good team,” Santiago conceded.

The idea for the mixed teams came from Cypress High School teacher Georgiana Rae, who shares her Santa Ana home with five developmentally disabled young men under a foster care arrangement. Rae’s two sons had friends on Santiago High School’s football team who would drop in occasionally. When the players were visiting and went to the garage to lift weights, she said, they would invite her five foster children to join them.

The young men developed a greater interest in sports, Rae said, as well as friendships with the athletes. That gave her the idea of bringing disabled and mainstream children together on sports teams.

The benefits are obvious for the disabled, she said, giving them new social contacts and a boost in their athletic prowess. For mainstream youngsters, she said, the gains are more subtle but no less valuable.

“They are learning about caring and nurturing,” she said. “Those are skills that can’t be taught. It is something you have to do.”