Unified Sports is going into its 10th season as an organized sport stronger than ever as enrollment numbers continue to rise.
Coached by award-winning IPS and English teacher Susie Micka, Unified Sports gives students of all abilities the opportunity to participate in athletics. The program offers unified club sports including basketball, bocce ball and soccer throughout the year and unified bowling is supported by the Kansas State High School Activities Association.

(Sama Abughalia)
This year the program has had a larger enrollment than ever with nearly 50 students participating, and Micka attributes this to her students’ passion for the program.
“The enthusiasm coupled with the overall willingness to make the program grow always has to come from students,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how much I want it to be a thing here at LHS. If the students don’t want it to be a thing, then it will wither.”
The unified team has been successful in the past couple years, having been recognized as two time National Unified Champion school. Freshman Jacob Micka said he thinks that part of this success comes from their numbers.
“The student participation and all the students getting involved in it … We just have a really strong student section here at LHS,” he said.
Susie Micka said she thinks that the success of programs is also possible because of the com-munity at LHS.
“There’s a lot of other schools that have really struggled to get it going consistently,” she said. “Our administration has been super supportive. Our coaches of our traditional sports have been super supportive as well. We get a lot of our traditional athletes who want to come and play unified and share that love of competition with all of their friends. And they really drive our program.”
The success of the team is also meaningful to many students including senior Aubrey Magnuson because of its accessibility.
“These are people who just learned how to play basketball,” Magnuson said. “But now they’re competing against other people and have learned to love this sport and make these friends throughout it when normally they wouldn’t be able to have that opportunity.”
The opportunities provided by Unified Sports also have other benefits for people with intellectual disabilities who are involved.
“I think we have a value on health,” Susie Micha said. “Research has shown that those that participate… in Unified Sports grow faster socially, and physically than they do when they are in traditional Special Olympics. When we play as a unified group, we learn that every person has value and we learn teamwork and sportsmanship.”
Magnuson said the program is meaningful to students because it gives them the opportunity to make new connections with all different types of people.

“It definitely encourages inclusion throughout the school because our IPS classes…are only junior and senior classes,” Magnuson said. “It gets those freshmen and sophomores started early making those connections with people that they’ll be going to school with for multiple years.”
This athletic opportunity also extends into LHS’ Kindness Just Because program, which has been particularly encouraging for senior Valeriano Aguinaga when he joined the team.
“It’s part of Kindness Just Because,” Aguinaga said. “Kindness Just Because is an activity group for learning how to be kind, selflessly.”
Aside from its success, ultimately the purpose of Unified Sports is inclusion.
“It’s just a big community of people who all want to be inclusive and connect with each other and just make new friends,” Magnuson said. “I think that’s pretty cool.”