Special Olympics to be held May 12

The 2012 Highland County Special Olympics will be held Saturday, May 12 at McClain Field, with more than 100 area participants.

The opening ceremonies will be held at 10 a.m., immediately followed by the indoor basketball and volleyball contests.

Track and field events will begin at 1:30 p.m. and will include a 50-meter dash, 100-meter dash, 50-meter walk, 100-meter walk, 25-meter wheelchair race, 50-meter wheelchair race, motorized wheelchair slalom, softball throw and standing long jump.

Each participant will receive a ribbon.

The first International Special Olympics Games were held in 1968 in Chicago's Soldier Field. The program was started by Eunice Kennedy Shriver when she saw "how unjustly and unfairly people with intellectual disabilities were treated. She also saw that many children with special needs didn’t even have a place to play," according to the website for the Special Olympics. "She held a summer day camp for young people with intellectual disabilities in her own backyard. The goal was to learn what these children could do in sports and other activities – and not dwell on what they could not do. This vision eventually grew into the global Special Olympics movement."

The program's mission "is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community."