Women’s and Men’s basketball, women’s lacrosse, softball, football, swim, and baseball spent Saturday, January 10, with purpose and service. The Lutes had the opportunity to connect with the Special Olympics of Pierce County during the Special Olympics Basketball Clinic.
The event was spearheaded by the PLU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), and the SAAC Faculty Representative and Women’s Lacrosse Head Coach, Melanie Rizzotti.“We put it out to the general student athlete population for volunteers, so it was cool to see more of our student athlete population come than just our SAAC representatives.”
The clinic drew in over 60 participants, not including family and PLU athlete supporters. Attendees ranged from ages 8-60, which provided a unique opportunity for love and sport to unite athletes all across the board.“It’s fun to see them share their love of their sport with athletes that love it,” said Rizzotti.
Attendees were broken up into groups based on their typical playing groups. The framework allowed for a variety of skills to be practiced simultaneously. To end the clinic, attendees scrimmaged against each other. “Athletes that are not familiar with basketball but are familiar with supporting, encouraging, and celebrating others, I think that’s fundamental to being a Lute,” said Rizzotti. “It was cool to see them just show up.”
For fourth-year student and guard on the Men’s Basketball team Mack Hepper, participating in the event was “an opportunity to give back to the community and …connect with them and be around so many loving and awesome people.” Hepper has been participating in the event since his freshman year. He reflected that “This year we had a lot of different sports teams there supporting, and so that brought up a lot of different energy and perspective.” Post-graduation, Hepper hopes to connect with a Special Olympics group again if he stays in the area.
Hepper described the energy of the event, along with his fellow athletes, as “contagious.” “It’s not just a basketball camp,” said Hepper. “It’s PLU’s student athletes [coming together].”
For the women’s basketball team, the event came at the right time. The day before the event, the team suffered a hard loss to Willamette University. “..we were feeling down, but then we go and serve, and in that capacity, I think it was just perfect timing to have a different perspective,” said Lee Aduddell, Head Coach for the PLU Women’s Basketball team. She noted that “The fact that my players got to take a sort of leadership role in putting on an event that was service-based, but also to see the joy in the attendees’ faces, was exactly what I needed that day, and I think all of us recognized that.”
“The event was outstanding,” said Aduddell. “I think the best adjective was joyful. All of the attendees were so thrilled to play a sport that they found enjoyable, but also to interact with all of the Lute athlete representatives.”
Aduddell spoke to the uncertainty her team had of working with new people, noting that the experience helped her players to explore new avenues of their sport. “I think it was the attendees who sort of broke that ice because they made it really easy to have conversations with and connect with and cheer for because they were not at all worried about competing with other people. They were just there to have a good time.”
During the team’s gratitude shoutouts at the beginning of practice the following Monday, the clinic was the first thing to be mentioned. “If we had the opportunity to do that again, we absolutely would because it was so fun and just an atmosphere of joy,” said Aduddell. “The Special Olympics is a special organization. Any opportunity to connect with them, of course, is a service to them, but is a gift to us as well.”
Special Olympics of Pierce County will return to PLU on February 21 to scrimmage during the halftime game of both men’s and women’s basketball against Whitman College.
