At the assembly on Friday, December 6th, the basketball game played by Mount Carmel’s Caravan Connection with the Ray Graham Training Center High School students aimed to include people with developmental disabilities. The atmosphere during the games proved this to be a great success, with the crowd being overwhelmingly supportive of the Ray Graham athletes, drumline, and dancers who participated.
Last year, a teacher at Ray Graham had a son, current sophomore Owen Morgan, coming to MC for his freshman year. She talked with Mr. Tabernacki about a partnership, and Caravan Connection was established. Caravan Connection is an extracurricular club now, and MC students in the group often meet with the Ray Graham students to play sports like volleyball, flag football, and dodgeball. The event in MC’s gym marked the first all school event with the collaboration, but they have previously been seen helping out by passing out flyers for recruitment for the organization and holding candy sales at lunch.
Ray Graham Training Center is a transitional program under CPS, a high school for young adults with developmental disabilities aged 18 to 22. It is for students with a range of special needs and abilities, with the goal of helping them integrate into society and gain skills for getting a job. The association aims to give them a community, and MC has aided greatly in that. In their normal school experience, they would liekly not get the opportunity of playing in a big game in front of such a big audience, but with Caravan Connection, that happened.
During the assembly, there was a demonstration with drumlines from MC and Ray Graham and a basketball tournament featured teams comprised of a combination of Caravan Connection members and Ray Graham students.
Ray Graham junior Jordan Yameogo had no aspirations of going to college or getting a job right after high school. Without anything to do, Yameogo was all but left out of society until his basketball skills were discovered. After seeing his speed and hearing of his interest in the sport, his teachers got him to play hoops at Ray Graham. Yameogo had finally found something to be involved in at school. He had played since he was a kid, but Friday was the first time he played in front of a crowd.
“I had a lot of fun,” he said. “And I was very happy for all the support.”
The support came from being the center of attention that day. He had an amazing twenty-six points on the day, and his dunks made everyone in the gym go crazy.
MC junior TJ Kolke, who played on one of the teams against Yameogo, was impressed with his skills. “I didn’t even bother to guard him,” Kolke said. “There was no chance I was stopping him.”
Yameogo mentioned that he has an interest in pursuing an engineering-related field following his time at Ray Graham.
Mrs. Margaret Joyce-Moroney, Director of MC’s McDermott-Doyle program, helped in coordinating the games, and she was happy with the outcome of the event as well. “Last year we couldn’t find a time to put on the basketball event,” she said. “But I’m glad we did this year. It was definitely a success.”
Previously, MC has also played competitive sports with Ray Graham under Special Olympics Unified. Last year, they competed against other schools such as St. Rita and St. Ignatius in basketball, flag football, and track. In the future there are plans for more of these activities.
MC and Caravan Connection helped give the Ray Parker participants a taste of competitive sports, an integral part of the high school experience. They even got the added bonus of all the energy and support seen in a regular game, as if they went to MC themselves.
