BY ROBERT BROWN
Special to The Review
Lake Orion High School varsity football players Chase Moore, a senior, and Andy Miller, a sophomore, passed the basketball and worked their way down court. Andy saw that Black Hole was open, standing just outside the three-point line.
A bounce pass, and Black Hole took the pass, looking, putting up the long shot, all net; his third three-point shot of the night. Skipping down the court with his thumbs pointing to his chest, proudly repeating ‘I’m the man, I am the man.?
Black Hole is an autistic special needs player who excels at the three-point shot, but he doesn’t dribble and he never passes, hence the nickname.
Rob McClellan, coach of the LOHS Special Olympics Unified Basketball Team, has a job keeping the right mix of players on the court. A unified team consists of two high school varsity athletes (not basketball players), with three special needs players. The result is a team as complex, competitive and intense as any that Tom Izzo fields in the Breslin Center.
Varsity players are selected carefully for attitude and aptitude. This year’s team included Roger Allison, Ryan Burchard, Miller, Moore, Tom Paulsen and Palmer Schoening.
They are expected to play with an intensity that equals their teammates?, and to work for the team’s success while never personally dominating the play. A varsity player is expected to shoot only if so open that to not shoot is an insult to the game, otherwise, they pass the ball and set someone else up.
McClellan must know each player’s talents and weaknesses. A special needs player typically has one or two skills in which he excels, and many where he doesn’t. The Black Hole is an outside shooter only; Big Nate, always asking, ‘Am I doing good?,? is a center and can pass or shot but not dribble.
Dan the Man is a playmaker, dishing the ball off to an open teammate. The varsity players? roles are to be playmakers, working with the talents of their teammates, setting them up for an open shot. They know a pass to the Black Hole will never be returned.
Big Nate will shoot if open or pass if covered, but will not dribble to get open. The team uses no set plays, but rather they adapt their attack to the situation presented and the players on the court.
The unified team plays an annual game in the high school fieldhouse. This year it was against the Sterling Heights Jardon Special Olympics team. At LOHS, it is the best attended basketball game of the year, with more than 1,500 spectators; an enthusiastic, wildly cheering crowd.
The atmosphere says Final Four. Anytime a special needs player scores it is as big as an overtime, driving up the middle, title winning, last second shot for the NBA title. It is big. The crowd feels the emotion and reacts. The players eat it up.
In this year’s game, the special needs players scored 42 of their 44 points; the varsity players still glow with pride over that game. Winning is Fmportant, but only if the win comes from a team effort.
Mike Crawford, now attending Saginaw Valley State, an alumni of the unified team, came to wish them good luck in the state tournament at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.
It is not unusual for former teammates to cheer this team on; it is still their team and they remain a part of it.
When asked, the varsity players become excited and animated as they describe the unified team, because it is their team, their teammates and they love the memory of the games in which they played.
Mostly, it is about vicarious pleasure, it is about their teammates, the special needs athletes who are known simply as teammates, characters, buddies, and friends.
They laugh together relating stories; like when they were in the hotel the night before the state tournament and one player had to call each of his three girlfriends before he went to bed but he needed help dialing their numbers.
Or, Dan the Man, always impeccably dressed, who would not leave the hotel room until his hair was combed just so.
These big guys loved this unified team experience, laughing and treasuring the time spent with their special needs teammates and the common experiences shared. Off the floor, friendships have developed between the varsity athletes and their special needs teammates, friendships that grew in the heat of competition and from the mutual respect held for a fellow athlete.
The Lake Orion team is the only unified team in Oakland County. In the Special Olympics State Tournament there were three other teams competing in Division III; Kalamazoo, Traverse City and Redford.
Lake Orion had won this championship for the preceding three years, but this year they lost in overtime to Redford and placed second.
Most important was they played in the tournament, together, as a team, and the final game was a team effort. Afterwards, they celebrated because they had competed together in their sport.