By Will McLernon
Medill Reports
High school basketball players from Southside Occupational Academy and De La Salle Institute in Bronzeville play together for Southside Unified. The squad — made up of athletes with and without intellectual disabilities — won back-to-back Unified Special Olympics State Basketball Championships in 2023 and 2024, and went to their third-straight state tournament in March, which they also won. See their preparation for the three-peat and the relationships that have been made because of Unified Basketball.
Transcript:
Narration: De La Salle Institute’s Athletic Director Tom White picks up students from this special education high school multiple times a week. They are part of his basketball team, Southside Unified. The Bronzeville-based squad has won back-to-back Illinois Unified high school championships. And this year, they are heading back to the state tournament in Champaign.
Matthew Furdge, Southside Unified Player: We practice hard, we get ready to win this championship and then call it a day, call it a three-peat, call it back-to-back-to-back, call it however you want to call it. It’s been amazing.
Narration: Unified Sport joins athletes with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team. The goal of this model is to have players that are relatively on the same level.
Tom White, Southside Unified Head Coach: We fit them into our practices so they could get better, and they do get better. Like we have kids that can dunk the ball. We have kids that could shoot the ball. We have kids that are faster than fast, and we put them together and we figure it out and we compete. And at times I think people look at us and (think), “Who are the kids with disabilities and who aren’t?”
Narration: Unified Basketball was introduced at De La Salle in 2023. Timmy Schergen jumped at the chance to get involved.
Timmy Schergen, Southside Unified Captain: So I have a special-needs brother, so I have always been around Unified and Special Olympics my whole entire life. And then when this opportunity came up of being a part of a team at my own school that I could play for, there was no doubt in my mind that I would say yes, and I did. It’s been an amazing time since, I’ve loved every minute of it. We have built relationships. There are kids that don’t play for our team no more that have graduated from the hub(Southside Occupational Academy), or graduated from D (De La Salle) even, that will still come back and watch our games or still want to be a part of it. What I mean by relationships, we all have each other’s phone numbers, Instagrams, and we have group chats, and we text each other about practice. It’s just what you’d expect out of a normal team. It’s the same thing.
Narration: Alexander McLaurin only started at Southside Occupational this year, but he felt a part of the unified team right away.
Alexander McLaurin, Southside Unified Player: These guys right here, they are like my brothers. I mean and I love them and stuff. We have fun off the court, on the court, I mean, like these guys are like my family right here. They energetic, they encourage one another, and if we mess up, do a mistake, they always tell us pick our heads up. We get back, just get back in the motion of what’s going on and how we are going to be prepared and ready for the next time.
Narration: Their coach notices that this experience is about more than just basketball.
White: It brings a tear to my eye, and I haven’t cried much in my life ever. They’re best friends of kids they would have never met in life if they didn’t have this opportunity right now, right here at this moment. They’re true friends.
Narration: Unified Sport started in Chicago in 2019. Now there are 70 schools across the city participating in a variety of sports. That is helping fill a needed gap.
Megan Reaska, Special Olympics Illinois: Those with intellectual disabilities don’t have nearly the same opportunities that your general person might have. So Unified Sports is another opportunity that they might not get elsewhere.
Narration: Many of the Southside Occupational Academy players graduated from general education schools across the city, but few had opportunities to compete in athletics.
Erin Mercer, Southside Occupational Teacher: Our students have disabilities, but when we walk into De La Salle, we feel like everybody — staff, student body — sees our students abilities, and they don’t just focus on the disability
Narration: This Unified Basketball experience doesn’t just mean the world to the players. White has coached basketball for nearly 40 years. That includes teaming up with Michael Jordan to run youth camps, winning more than 400 games as De La Salle’s boys head coach and seeing his players earn Division I scholarships. But he says coaching Southside Unified has been the most rewarding experience of his career.
White: I’ve never been told, besides my family, how much they love me. Special Olympics kids and the Unified players, they don’t hide that. If they love you, they’re going to come up and they hang on you and they tell you how much they love you. And they show it with their attention to detail and how they want to slap fives every time we see it. It’s really opened up my eyes to the sport.
Narration: White had retired from coaching in 2021. But when De La Salle came to him to run the Unified Basketball team, he couldn’t say no.
White: I have, I had a special needs nephew, Mikey White. He passed away a few years ago, he had Down syndrome, and I would go watch his events with my brother, who was his father, and he would be so into the Special Olympics that it was just exhilarating. I would get so wound up in his floor hockey games or track or whatever sports he was playing. I see Mikey in every one of these Special Olympics kids, I do see him. I remember how much it meant to him, and I do see how much it means to them, so I don’t want to let them down and make sure that we keep rolling and that we keep doing the things, and I know Mikey is watching over us upstairs right now.
Narration: The De La Salle community has rallied around the Unified Basketball team. The Catholic school held a send-off for the players before their trip to the state tournament.
Mario Ramirez, Southside Unified Player: Since our last game, we had everybody in the bleachers, everything was packed, some had to stand outside the bleachers because there’s not enough room. They’re all really supportive and proud of us.
Narration: Furdge has played Unified Basketball for three years. He wants to finish his career with one more championship.
Furdge: It’s going to be history, our names going to be out on the news, everybody will be talking about us one day in the future, soon as we do win this three-peat.
Narration: Southside Unified will play two games in Champaign. If they win both, the three-peat will be complete. Reporting in Bronzeville, Will McLernon, Medill Reports.
Will McLernon is a graduate student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism specializing in sports media. You can reach him at willmclernon2024@u.northwestern.edu
