At Eaglecrest High School, the national program, Unified Sports has participated through many avenues.

Here at Eaglecrest we have a few sports: track, flag football, and basketball. The term Unified reflects exactly what it stands for, being together.

Kids who volunteered to play sports with the ILC participants spend that time practicing and playing the games with them.

There are the two roles, a helper and a player. Usually the players are the ILC kids, and the helpers are anyone that is not in ILC. With that in mind, there are different rules.

Helpers are only allowed to do certain things, while players do all of them.

In basketball, a helper is only allowed to take the ball down court, help another player when needed, catch rebounds and take the ball down court. The players do the blocking, shooting, dribbling and occasionally passing.

The current sport for this season is basketball for Unified sports is basketball. Student coach Dakota Hanson is in charge of this season.

“We did well so far and we just try to work hard and get things done,” she says.

With the season winding down, the Unified Basketball team has a record of 4 wins and 6 losses in their Varsity season, with the last game they won against Cherry Creek. Hanson reacted to the game with enthusiasm and excitement, “Apparently we just kicked butt”.

The Unified games are usually played before the girls varsity game, and then the boys varsity game. So a crowd is not always as big as it would be for boys varsity. As one of the team members, a crowd for the team would bring joy to their hearts.

When asked Hanson if he was or has played any other of the Unified Sports, he responded with, “I was a player during Freshman and Sophomore year. Being the coach this year, I just want to try something new and see what I can do”.

Lucas Ingraham is one helper on Unified Basketball. Ingraham says, “It’s going pretty well. We’ve had some pretty good games. Overall we’ve been doing real good”.  Everyone on the team has their own things to work on as an individual. Ingraham said that he could work on, “giving the ball to other players instead of two people.”

“We just all work hard and be the best we are” said Hanson.