It’s been ten years since Unified Bowling landed in NSAA, and from the start, it’s brought both general and special education students together as a team. Since those first strikes as the program got rolling, Unified sports have expanded and left a huge impact on the schools that support them, and with its tenth anniversary approaching, the team plans to make this year one to remember.
Unified Bowling started in 2016, when it was added as an official NSAA sport. However, for the school to establish a team, they needed coaches. So, Unified Bowling coach Tricia Rohde volunteered, despite having no previous experience in either coaching or bowling.
“So finally, I was like, ‘Well, if you really don’t have anybody, I want the team to happen, so I’ll do it for like a year.’ And then an English teacher here, Mr. Cobb, he used to come in my classroom all the time and help out during his plan. So he coached with me for two years,” Rohde said.
While the team’s other coach has changed throughout the years, Rohde has remained, coaching throughout every year of the program. She’s witnessed the program expand and has taken the chance to develop the team’s positive environment and welcome more people into it.
“When we first started, we had different players on a unified team: we had athletes, and we had participants. The athletes were only students who had an intellectual disability, and so we had to question, why just them? Why is it that specific verification? Why not more?” Rohde said. “[The program] has changed a little bit and evolved, which has been nice, and the goal is to be inclusive, and I think that that has been a good goal of Unified and has continued to be in all these years.”
Of course, Unified Bowling hasn’t just influenced MN. As the first Unified sport in NSAA, it also created opportunities to introduce new Unified activities.
“I think that it really opened [Unified sports] up, now that we’ve done this, and we’ve had this under control, and it’s really successful, what else can we add? And I think they found track [to be] an easy thing that they can add because we have the track and we have teams so they can go there. We’ve had a little bit of Unified Swimming here, and then cheerleading, we’ve also done a little bit,” Rohde said.
These developments have improved the program tremendously, but senior Nathaniel Gust hopes that the program will continue to adapt and evolve over the years.
“I feel like they need to just keep on improving [the program] and keep on fixing something. Even if it seems perfect, there’s always something you can get better at, so I don’t know what it is, but it’d be nice to continue to see improvements to keep the program going and stay at a success,” Gust said.
The program’s progression has also convinced more people to participate. This year, so many people tried out that they had to make a waiting list to join.
“It has definitely been growing more in previous years as I’ve been hearing from other people. We’re coming back with more kids coming into the school, and it’s just going to keep on growing. I think we tried to recruit 12 people at orientation,” sophomore Sam Harris said.
Rohde has already made several plans to help commemorate the milestone, and she hopes to bring the celebration to the whole school.
“We’re going to do ten year anniversary t-shirts that we just got the design [for], so now we just have to turn them into the school store,” Rohde said.
The celebration extends beyond this year’s bowlers as well. Even former students who have been impacted by their time on the team have been invited to reconnect with one big get-together.
“We’re going to invite the bowlers from the last ten years to come to our banquet that we have at the end of the season… It’s always interesting to hear what they’re doing. Some of them are bowling, and some of them went into special education because they bowled on the unified team and got to know students in special education,” Rohde said.
Additionally, the team’s celebration is taking a role in the start of their competitive season. Their first match is their triangular against Millard South and Millard West, a competitive match with a highly sought-after trophy.
“We’ve won that trophy seven times, and Millard South has beat us twice, [and] they currently have that trophy. We want to win it back for the tenth year, and so to prepare for that, we’re going to do some decorations around the school. We’re going to put out some signs in front with colors, information, our names on there, so we want to just really celebrate [that] Unified Bowling is here,” Rohde said.
This celebration is about more than just a team: it’s an ode to the activity that pioneered a new form of inclusivity within NSAA. Now that it’s lasted ten years, hopes are high for the program to hit further and further milestones.