Hampton High School
Senior? Yes
Elite top 100? Yes
Letters of recommendation: Letter of Recommendation 1, Letter of Recommendation 2
As students hibernate from the bitter Pittsburgh winter, the Hampton High School hallways bustle with excitement. From dancing and dribbling to swimming and sprinting, hundreds of students swarm the school preparing for performances and competitions. In the center of all the typical winter sport practices is one team revolutionizing the high school athletic scene: the bocce club. With six special education and five general education students, my team, although the smallest, has become the most profound and inspirational activity in Hampton. We compete as a unified club against other school bocce teams in Allegheny and Westmoreland County, while celebrating the abilities of all students and integrating discriminated groups of students into the mainstream school community. As a senior captain, I have led my club through team-building activities, organized performances at our games, and strategized and cheered for everyone in practice and on the court to help us compete the best we can in our matches and to, most importantly, expand the mission of Special Olympics not only in Hampton but throughout
the metro area. Our jam-packed bocce matches complete with a marching band, cheerleaders, and a student section has inspired other schools to fully weave their unified sports into their athletic programs and organize an entire community event at their games.
Socially, the bocce team has transformed the dynamics of the school into a more inclusive, community-driven place where now anyone can welcomingly participate in sports or activities with friends. It has erased the stigma surrounding disabilities in our school through Unified Sports’ nature of general and special education students competing together and through the student section cheering and rallying for all participants. Academically, the team has accelerated the development of the Special Education program. It has even inspired a new integrated cooking elective during which general and special education students will collaborate on culinary projects. Beyond Special Education, this fostering of inclusion and optimism has helped to bridge the social divides that commonly exist in high school. Everyone is tolerant and welcoming of others, and more than ever is any student encouraged to hang out with anyone or pursue any goal they desire.
On a personal level, having an opportunity where I am encouraged to lead others and be myself has helped me gain self-confidence in my abilities and optimism for my future. This positivity has permeated into my classes and other extracurriculars and incited me to become the quintessential extrovert–the person who, through inclusive and upbeat conversation, leads others to feel their most joyous and confident. I hope to carry this new attitude with me into college and my prospective career field to become a fair, positive leader in the engineering and business world; simultaneously, I hope to search for ways to innovate these fields socially and structurally as my bocce team has revolutionized the makeup of my high school athletic community.