Health & Fitness
S.O.S: Delco Special Olympics Needs Volunteers For Training Camp
Delaware County is restricting Special Olympics athletes participation in multi-sports in August due to insufficient chaperons/coaches. We have long list of athletes wishing to attend.
For the last 30 years, Pennsylvania counties have been sending delegations of Special Olympic athletes for a week-long, multi-sport camp to Antiochian Village, Bolivar, in the Johnstown-Altoona area.
Pennsylvania is the only state in the union which offers this program to Special Olympics athletes.
Here's how it works: We stay at Antiochian Village, an Orthodox Christian camp for Syrian-Lebanese-Egyptian Christians. There are no fees. The week at camp is funded through the sale of religious icons by its young members nationwide.
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Special Olympic athletes select a primary sport before leaving for camp and play that sport every morning. In the afternoon, athletes join a "team" based on level of functioning and rotate for 40 minutes through sports they did not select as their primary–basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball, tennis, swimming, track, lifetime (golf, bocce, walking).
There are also excursions such as fishing at a nearby lake, bowling in Johnstown, as well as evening in-camp events. Each cabin has one adult from the original county and one young person (16-19 year old) from the church in addition to the athletes. The food is terrific and the camp is in a mountain setting with clean air and lots of stars. The medical department has its own building.
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For the athletes, this is Christmas in August!
Special Olympics rules require one adult coach/chaperone for every four athletes. For this year's week, from Aug. 12-18, we now have only two women’s coaches and three men’s coaches. Unless we can find volunteers quickly, we will have one huge bus half full and many Delaware County athletes unable to go. Usually, Delaware County delegation is at least 50 strong and has been 75.
I have done this for six years and it is a blast.
If you are over 18, have the time and energy for a week long of fun and laughter while helping athletes making personal breakthroughs, have questions or want to sign-up, please call me at 610-325-4477.
All candidates are carefully screened and the cut off for getting applications into the "process" is May 15th. So please, please hurry!
Come on Delaware County (population of 800,000); we can do better than five volunteers!
