The flag football games kick off at 5 p.m. Oct. 1, 8 and 15 at the Blackburn-McMurray Outdoor Sports Complex on Insight Park Avenue.
OXFORD, Miss. – Dozens of University of Mississippi students, faculty and staff members are gearing up to participate in flag football games over the next month with Special Olympics athletes from across north Mississippi, thanks to the university’s Special Olympics College chapter.
SO College is a program that connects students and individuals with intellectual disabilities through sport to build friendships and help further the goals of Special Olympics. Unified sports teams join people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team. Each team is made of people with similar ages and abilities.
“A lot of the unified partners do play on another flag football team through our intramural program, but some don’t,” said Amanda Alpert, coordinator of intramural sports and sports clubs for the UM Department of Campus Recreation. “We opened it up to anybody who is interested, and we got a lot of emails and calls from people who wanted to play.”
The games kick off at 5 p.m. Oct. 1, 8 and 15 at the Blackburn-McMurray Outdoor Sports Complex on Insight Park Avenue, near Oxford Fire Station No. 4. The public is invited to the games and admission is free.
The UM unified flag football championship game will be Oct. 22 at the complex. Participants from this season’s games also will be eligible for the Unified Egg Bowl, set for Nov. 16. The first Unified Egg Bowl was played in Starkville last November.
Through the support of the campus recreation department, the university’s chapter of SO College has taken off, said Jim Beaugez, director of public relations and communications for Special Olympics Mississippi.
“We were really encouraged by the support we saw from the Unified Egg Bowl by Ole Miss and Mississippi State,” Beaugez said. “The relationship we were able to develop with coordinator Amanda Alpert really gave us the infrastructure to start SO College at Ole Miss.”