Competing in the Special Olympics and Being Neurotypical by Emma

Competing in the Special Olympics and Being Neurotypical by Emma - April 2022 Scholarship Essay

Me and my brother Jacob have always been very close, maybe even closer than most siblings can say for themselves. Ever since we were little, we've been practically joined at the hip. Given that my brother has autism, there have been many conflicts through my childhood, but we always came back together. I remember when my brother first competed in the Special Olympics for swimming. Although I don't remember it all too well, the Facebook memories make up for the lack of being able to fully reflect. I do remember though, watching him swim and feel this overwhelming sense of pride. Despite Jacob physically and mentally struggling with most things in his life, it made me ever-so gleeful to watch him happily glide through the water. He continued to swim for the Special Olympics until we had to move from Baltimore.
When we moved to Panama City, Jake decided he wanted to try something different, and he began doing Special Olympics track and field. Pretty instantly though, you could tell that running just did not give him as much satisfaction. Unfortunately, swimming is not available for Bay County’s Special Olympics, so he really didn’t have much of a choice in terms of being able to choose what he wanted. His first year definitely could’ve been better, but he struggled mostly because running did not seem to motivate him a whole lot. When the next year came around, Jacob was not having it. Infact, he really hated the idea of it. My family and I didn’t want him to give up, especially since we knew it was important for all of us to stay active, including Jake. After the first practice session, one of the volunteers asked me about how Jacob was enjoying track, and I kept things completely honest. I told her that he was really not having fun with running, and that he just gets too frustrated with it. After some thought, she offered me the position of being his “unified partner”. Although they had never had a neurotypical person compete with someone on the spectrum in Bay County, we got all the paperwork situated for me to begin working with my brother.
One of the issues me and Jake had faced was the fact that neither of us were really runners. I did a lot of sports involving running, but that was always easier because I was distracted by the other physicalities of it. Since we had signed up for the long-distance 3K run, we knew we REALLY needed to put in some work if we wanted to get anywhere. Every single day, we would run a 3k on the track at our AirForce base. Running that much did become quite dreadful, but we all saw that Jacob noticeably enjoyed doing it a lot more when he ran with me. When it came to competition, me and Jake won our first race in the county. This also meant that I was the first unified partner to not only compete, but to also win in the history of Bay County. We then continued on to compete against some other counties around Bay, and me and Jacob proceeded to win again, this time beating our record by 2 minutes.
The only other place to go was state competition. We were invited to the ESPN Wide World of Sports, and despite us beating our record again by a minute or so, we didn’t win this time. Despite us being slightly disappointed, we knew our hard work wasn’t for nothing. Running with Jacob was not only inspirational to myself, but also to other people. That year, at the awards ceremony, I was selected as the “Most Inspiring Unified Partner” for the entirety of the state of Florida. I had never considered how eye-opening my experience of working with my brother could have been, but despite the praise, I was and still am mostly proud of Jacob. He went from loathing track to actually enjoying it. Even though I know I was a key element to him being motivated, he was the only reason I would have ever wanted to run 3 kilometers on a daily basis. He taught me that sometimes, even when you feel the least motivated to do something, sometimes all you need is someone to grab your hand and pull you along until you feel good enough.