Before Donna Roberto coached Special Olympians, she spent 27 years working with cheerleading squads around her hometown of Wanaque. These days she has little use for human pyramids and pom-pom routines.
“The great thing about this event is nobody’s putting pressure on anybody,” says Roberto, Team New Jersey’s head gymnastics coach for the Special Olympics 2014 USA National Games. “It’s not like cheerleading or all the other sports where parents and coaches get crazy competitive. Everybody just wants these people to be the best they can be.”
The Games are scheduled for June 14 through 21 at locations around New Jersey. It’s the first time the event—launched in 2006—will be held in the Garden State.
Roberto, 62, has spent every Saturday night since last fall at Elite Gymnastics in Hawthorne training three women—Molly Hebert, 22, of Ocean; Courtney Muns, 18, of Garfield; and Alyssa Sims, 29, of Teaneck—for the nationals. They are among the 3,500 athletes with disabilities who will compete in 16 Olympic-style sports, including soccer, basketball and track and field. All of the athletes qualified after competing in events at the county and state levels.
And though each competitor won gold in earlier events to qualify, they are not all elite athletes, says Marc Edenzon, president of Special Olympics New Jersey.
“What we’re going for is representation for all levels of play, so we use a division system,” he says. That means, unlike the regular Olympics, each sport has competitions based on skill level. “There could be five divisions in soccer and five divisions in swimming,” says Edenzon. “As long as an athlete is able to compete by the rules, regardless of performance, they’re eligible for the games.”
The USA National Games take place every four years. Most of this year’s events—which are free and open to the public—will be held in and around Mercer County at Princeton University, the College of New Jersey, Mercer County Park and other venues. Cycling events will be held in Skillman Park in Mercer County; bowling will be in North Brunswick.
Roberto is one of 73 volunteer coaches statewide. In all, 266 New Jersey athletes qualified for the games. They have spent recent months honing their skills at gyms, pools and tracks in every county of the state, says Edenzon.
The announcement that the Games would be held in New Jersey came in March 2013. The bid to bring them here dates to 2011.
“Seattle was interested, Tampa was interested. But in the end we were challenged most by Boston,” says Edenzon, who cites factors like New Jersey’s proximity to New York and its potential to attract corporate supporters as key to the state’s selection by the Washington, D.C., branch of the Special Olympics national organization. Fox Sports will air one hour of highlights after the games, and Edenzon and other organizers are weighing the feasibility of live streaming.
Edenzon, a Montgomery resident, started volunteering with Special Olympics in the 1970s and was hired to run Special Olympics New Jersey in 1995. “The most exciting thing about this has been that it showcases the strength of Special Olympics New Jersey as an organization,” he says. “We’ve really grown. Corporations and individuals across the state have been incredibly receptive.”
The games, with opening ceremonies June 15 at the Prudential Center in Newark, are expected to attract 80,000 people and bring $116.5 million in revenue to the area. But to some, that’s beside the point.
“The week represents everything that’s right about sportsmanship,” Edenzon says. “It’s a different culture of sport, but our athletes are extremely serious and very conscientious, and their success here helps them to understand they can be successful going forward in all avenues of life. My feeling is it’s the purest thing you’re ever going to see in sports.”