After several months of long preparation, Eureka’s first official Special Olympics was ready to take place on March 7. The many volunteers at EHS that committed their time to this event paired up with athletes from the St. Louis area to play basketball on the day of Special Olympics.

“The Special Olympics is a tournament for students with special needs who are going to be attending from all over the St. Louis area, and our focus that day is basketball,” Associate Principal Sarah Goodman said. “So students will get to play basketball, and they will be paired with EHS students who have volunteered to be their buddies for the day.”

Since his freshman year, Bennett Bachert, 12, has been encouraging the idea of bringing Special Olympics to EHS. During Bachert’s junior year, he finally got the go ahead to rally a group so he could start it up. Charlotte Flowers, 12, is one of his fellow peers he chose to get the event going.

“I think we have 200 something volunteers that sign up and they’ll be volunteering to help with the event,” Flowers said.

Special Olympics isn’t only a basketball event, it also has other fun things to participate in.

“All of the athletes will be able to collect prizes and items as they play the games, and they can choose to get their face painted,” Savanna Wylie, 12, said. “I also found volunteers from each club to run their booth and will be helping to answer any questions during set-up or during the event.”

Although there are plenty of teachers helping manage the event such as Language Arts teacher Keith Pardeck, the staff sponsor, the Special Olympics is mostly a student run organization. They are preparing to hold future events by recruiting volunteers to learn how to lead the event.

“We came up with the idea that this year we would have five underclassmen, because there’s five positions on the board that will train and take over,” Bachert said. “Just because this is kind of one of those things where it’s quite special, very specialized and you need to know what you’re doing.”

Due to the fact that the students have many responsibilities in running Special Olympics, there is a lot of work to be done. Nevertheless, they put in a lot of effort to ensure a fun day.

“It is a really big undertaking, and they do a really great job of kind of divvying up responsibilities,” Pardeck said. “Everyone leaves a meeting with something they need to be doing and every week everyone comes back and all that stuff we said needed to get done ends up getting

 done.”

In 2024, after preparing for a fun-filled day dedicated to Special Olympics, the weather ended up harming their plans. Not only was school

 called out for the day, but what was supposed to be the first Special Olympics was cancelled due to snow. However, the cancellation of the

event led to less preparation time this year around.

“Last year was our first year of hosting Special Olympics, and since it got canceled, we are able to keep a lot of the same decorations and t-shirts that were made last year,” Wylie said. “This made the planning process a little easier.”

With this having been the first official time EHS hosted the event, many students and

staff enjoyed putting this event together and making dreams come true.

“Special Olympics is one of the many inclusive activities that we do here at school,” Goodman said. “What I love about Special Olympics is that if people have never had the opportunity to be a part of it before, it is just a day of fun and joy and involvement in school.”

Special Olympics has more significance than sports and physical activity.

“It promotes a lot of unity, and the IDD community is kind of overlooked in a lot of ways,” Bachert said. “It kind of opens up a lens for people to look in and see like we’re pretty much all the same people. Just a great way to make friends and to understand a lot better, which I think is a really valuable thing for a lot of students.”

It is safe to say that Eureka’s 2025 Special Olympics was a hit.

“I hope this is something that we can continue to grow here at Eureka,” Pardeck said. “I think it’s something a lot of people kind of see value in and are willing to support, so I just hope that this continues and turns into a tradition.”