Special Olympics New York Summer Games come to Ithaca

Last month, an effort that’s been a long time coming finally came to fruition: the Special Olympics New York (SONY) State Summer Games are coming to Ithaca. SONY CEO Stacey Hengsterman, Tompkins County Legislature Chair Shawna Black, Ithaca College President La Jerne Terry Cornish and local Special Olympics athletes made the announcement May 16, and since then, the hype has only grown.

The 2022 State Summer Games will be held June 24 and 25 at various area locations, including Ithaca College (opening and closing ceremonies, swimming, basketball, gymnastics, tennis and volleyball), Ithaca High School (track and field and powerlifting) and Midway Lanes (bowling). Ithaca will also be hosting the 2023 and 2024 State Summer Games, but further details on those games have yet to be released.

Area and SONY leaders have also announced the need to fill approximately 800 volunteer jobs for this year’s event. Volunteers must be vaccinated and registered in advance, and no sports experience is necessary. Jobs include set-up, parking assistance, meal distribution, award coordination, athlete escorts, photography, scorekeeping and more. Register at tinyurl.com/2kl2lkes.

As sources interviewed for this story explained, Ithaca has been trying to host the Special Olympics New York for several years now. Cornell University’s Karli Buday, a SONY coach, said that about seven years ago, she and others worked to get Ithaca to host the Fall Games, but just when it looked like Ithaca had a shot, SONY announced that it’d be putting the Fall Games on a three-year hiatus.

“We started focusing [on], ‘OK, if we can’t do the Fall Games, what else can we do?’” she said. “And so, we switched gears and decided to do the Summer Games.”

Buday broke down what kind of effort she and others put in to bring the Special Olympics to Ithaca.

“You kind of have to have all your ducks in a row,” she said. “You have to have housing. You have to have the community on board. You have to have the local businesses on board. You have to have a couple of different big sponsors. You need to have the right committee to make it all happen.”

Unfortunately, Ithaca was hit with two big roadblocks that meant all that work had to be done practically three times over. First, the Fall Games were canceled, and then, after Ithaca shifted focus to summer — and was on track to host the 2020 Summer Games — the pandemic hit, canceling both the 2020 and 2021 Summer Games.

After so many hurdles, it’s no wonder there’s near universal excitement that this is finally Ithaca’s year.

“We’ve waited a long time to return to being able to hold events once again,” said Laura Lewis, acting mayor for the city of Ithaca. “I’m just delighted that we’ve been able to resume the arrangements, thanks to all the many partners — the county, TC3, Cornell, local attorneys. Everyone has pulled together to make this event as special as it should be. And there was a lot of planning that went into the 2020 Special Olympics, [which] had to be put on pause of course, and now, the planning that has taken place, it’s so nice to see that planning come to fruition.”

At SONY, Associate Director of Development Michaela Darbyshire said she’s also glad the Summer Games are back.

“They were supposed to do it in Ithaca before COVID happened, and obviously, with everything with COVID, that was, like a lot of things for our organization, it was backtracked,” she said. “So, we’re just thankful that the community is welcoming us back … and that the college is on board, our athletes are on board, our sponsors are on board. They’re welcoming us back with open arms.”

Darbyshire added that she’s known for a while that Ithaca and Tompkins County are such welcoming communities, especially given the great turnout at this year’s Polar Plunge (see tinyurl.com/2fo8xmyo for the full story).

Tompkins County is home to many SONY athletes, and several said they’re looking forward to having the competitions much closer to home.

“I’ve been in Special Olympics for 10 years now, and I’ve been to Austria in 2017 for snowshoeing, and I went to Dubai in 2019 for track and field,” said SONY athlete and Groton resident Kinsey Henry. “I’m very excited that I don’t have to travel very far, as I usually do.”

Kinsey’s father, Kevin Henry, shared similar enthusiasm.

“We practice at the track,” he said. “That’s where the Ithaca High School is, where we’ve had our training sessions at for a while. So yeah, it’s nice. It’s been several years since it’s been in the area. And I think people are really going to enjoy coming this way. It’s very central, the area’s really nice, and everything’s really close. So, I think a lot of the athletes, a lot of people that will make it the area are going to really enjoy it.”

Deborah Mohlenhoff, associate vice president of college relations at Tompkins Cortland Community College and chair of the local SONY organizing committee, said that the Ithaca locations are undoubtedly up to SONY caliber, and she’s excited for newcomers to see all that the area has to offer.

“Ithaca College has that beautiful A&E center,” she said. “So, these athletes that are champions coming for the state games, they deserve a really top-notch, stellar location to have all of these culminating events for themselves. So, we’re just really excited that we have a facility that allows them to be the champions that they will be participating in all of these games.”

In addition to the benefit the games’ location brings to athletes, Black said that the games will also greatly benefit the city and county as a whole.

“Aside from the great work and amazing event — this helps our local economy,” she said in an email. “Athletes and their families come to Ithaca, eat at our restaurants, stay at our hotels and appreciate all that Tompkins County has to offer.”

Several sources shared that they’re hoping the Summer Games being in Ithaca helps to spread more awareness of what SONY is all about.

To qualify for the Special Olympics, all athletes must be “identified by an agency or professional as having one of the following conditions: intellectual disabilities, cognitive delays as measured by formal assessment, or significant learning or vocational problems due to cognitive delay” (specialolympics.org/about/faq).

SONY Coach Paula Cusano explained that, because these conditions are often misunderstood and stigmatized, the games often aren’t properly recognized or appreciated. But, as she attested, the games mean so much to the athletes and their families.

“The biggest thing that I’ve noticed as a coach is the growth that our athletes go through,” she said. “A lot of our athletes will start out, and the first year, they’re usually pretty shy about everything and they’re not familiar, maybe, with the sport that they want to participate in. … Once they start to win, and actually get involved in the competition, then it’s just the pride they feel, and the self-esteem just starts to go through the roof. And they just become obviously more confident in themselves as they compete.”

Having the games in Ithaca also stands to greatly increase the county’s presence in SONY. As Buday and Mohlenhoff explained, the Southern Tier isn’t its own region under SONY, so Ithaca doesn’t have paid staff members from SONY to support the logistics of the games like other regions would. Instead, the city has to rely on volunteers.

“We don’t have as many athletes as the other areas that are truly individualized,” Buday said. “And the reason for that is we don’t have the staff. And so, … I’m hoping it kind of helps the state realize that, if we were regionalized, we would have more athletes that could be involved. And we could service more of our community members that I just feel like … don’t know enough about Special Olympics or if they qualify to be an athlete.”

Sources interviewed encouraged residents to participate in this summer’s Special Olympics New York in any way they’d like, including volunteering, donating and attending in person. As Mohlenhoff explained, the need for donations has increased largely due to the pandemic, rising gas prices and other economic factors.

“We put the budget together in 2020 for what the Summer Games would look like,” she said. “I think a lot of that has changed for this summer. So, we need a little extra cushion in our fundraising because we had some unanticipated costs that have just gotten a lot higher as a result of … all those economic things that we can’t really control.”

To donate and learn more about this year’s Summer Games, visit specialolympics-ny.org/community/2022-summer-games/.

Jessica Wickham is the managing editor of Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to them at editorial@VizellaMedia.com.