Elizabeth Price

What is Champions Together? Champions Together is a bridge between the IHSAA and Special Olympics Indiana that promotes inclusion for individuals with disabilities through sports and activities.

What are some activities Champions Together does? Each year we hold about four different activities. Our activities are unified soccer clinics, unified basketball, unified swim clinics and sometimes we do unified cheer clinics. We’re also the host for the Special Olympics Indiana Unified Bocce State Tournament every fall.

What are some upcoming events that Champions Together will be hosting or involved in? This weekend we actually have our unified swim clinic which is a partnership with the Carmel swim team, so we do a unified swim relay. I don’t know, actually, if it’s between JV invites, but it’s just during JV invites we have some of the swimmers swim with our athletes and kind of promote inclusion for swimming through the swim team.

How can students get involved in Champions Together? Champions Together is actually a club you have to be nominated to be a part of, however we are always looking for volunteers to help at our events, so that is one really great way to get involved. If you also wanted to get involved with just unified in general you could join a unified sport. We have unified flag football in the fall and unified track and field in the spring.

What is Mr. Carmel? Mr. Carmel is a guy’s spoof pageant. It’s really just a way for us to raise funds in just a really fun environment. Each year we choose 15 senior guys to compete. We put together a whole separate committee that really dedicates a lot of time and effort to make sure that we collect the right 15 guys that will not only represent Champions Together but just represent their sports and the community as a whole. The guys learn a two minute dance that is choreographed by the Coquettes team, Coquettes seniors. After that, then they have to put together a unique talent. In the past we’ve had some really crazy talents. We’ve had guys do ribbon dances, we’ve had guys try to break the world (record) of eating hot dogs in a five minute timespan, we’ve had all sorts of talents. It’s just a really great way to fulfill our whole school engagement requirement from Special Olympics and to just bring more awareness and respect to our mission as a committee and club.