Going for the Gold: Special Olympics Soccer Team Realizes Dream

In Spring of 2025 it was announced that Special Olympics Indiana was given a slot for a Unified soccer team for the 2026 USA Games to be held in Minneapolis, MN.

Unified soccer in Special Olympics is played seven vs seven on a smaller field about 50 meters by 70 meters, with three regular athletes (unified partners) and four Special Olympic athletes on the field at all times. It was the first time that Indiana had ever participated in the sport of soccer at the national level.

I inquired about the procedure for selecting the team and coaches for this event and was invited by the state office of Special Olympics Indiana to help with the tryouts scheduled for May 2025. 

At the tryouts a group of six or seven coaches and soccer club officials put about 60 players through their paces to select the best six special Olympic athletes and six unified partners for Team Indiana. After a morning of drills, ball skills, and scrimmaging the coaches got together and selected the players for Team Indiana.

The team was announced during the 2025 Special Olympics Indiana Summer Games in Terre Haute. Initially I was not named a coach as I had also volunteered to coach the track & field athletes for the 2026 games (I was the head coach for track & field for the 2022 USA Games in Orlando).

The track & field team was announced in July 2025 and one of our local athletes, Alexandria Gotoh, was named to the team along with Coach Renee Parks from BB (Bartholomew, Brown, & Jennings Counties). Again, I was not named a coach and at that point assumed I would not be making the trip to Minneapolis.

Almost immediately I started receiving congratulatory notes from around the state for being named one of the coaches for Team Indiana. I went online and I was surprised to find out that I was now one of the two coaches for the soccer team for the USA Games. I was excited to again be part of Team Indiana.

In August of 2025 we had our first Team Indiana Camp at Rose-Hulman University in Terre Haute. 

Team Indiana consisted of 109 athletes, coaches, and support personnel all named as part of the group competing in Minnesota in a variety of sports including bocce, bowling, cornhole, basketball, golf, flag football, power lifting, track & field, swimming, and soccer. It was our first opportunity to work with the soccer players and actively practice so that the different athletes could start working as a team. Nine of the players on the team were from Dekalb County, just north of Ft. Wayne, one was from Fishers, one from Lebanon, and the last was from Milan. The other coach, Ron, was also from Dekalb County.

September of 2025 was the soccer tournament for the Special Olympics EKS (Eunice Kennedy Shriver) games at Grand Park in Westfield. Team Indiana was able to scrimmage a volunteer group of athletes from Brebeuf High School. I don’t remember the score, but both teams played well and the scrimmage was intense. Team Indiana was starting to take shape.

Team Indiana was talented. Five of our six unified partner athletes played soccer at the college level. The sixth player qualified and played for Team USA at the Paris Special Olympics World Soccer Games held in July 2026. Three of our six special Olympics athletes had played soccer extensively at the local level and the other three were very good athletes just not much soccer experience. One of those athletes, Charlie from Milan, expressed a desire to learn how to be a goalie and had very good instincts for that position. Jonathan, from Fishers, had great tenacity and could run forever. Elliot from Lebanon was a big, strong athlete that was hard to stop near the goal.

In November 2025 we had another team camp at Indian Creek High School. We practiced and then scrimmaged a volunteer team from Johnson County which had a lot of very good players on it. Team Indiana held their own winning the scrimmage by a couple of goals. We played well against them and learned a lot about our players in a game type situation. The coaches realized that we were a much better team with Charlie as goalie as that let us have three unified players in field positions that could distribute the ball to everyone else on the team.

We had a camp at Wabash College in April 2026. I ran the team through passing and shooting drills and we practiced some team defensive drills. We were able to scrimmage the Wabash College varsity soccer team and again held our own losing by just a single goal. Confidence was building.

Throughout that month and into May, we scrimmaged teams from the Fort Wayne area about once a week. I drove up for all the contests usually bringing Jonathan and sometimes Elliot with me so that they could get more playing time and experience. We always worked in a short practice session before playing and we were able to get the team working well together. All of the scrimmages were competitive and the team improved with each contest. Charlie was getting goalie training locally from his County Coordinator and was getting better all the time.

On June 19 that year we all flew to Minneapolis for the USA Games. Three quarters of Team Indiana flew on the Dove Flights (private jetes) including the soccer team. Lots of excitement at both the departing airport in Indy and the arrival airport in St. Paul for all of the states coming to the USA Games. We got settled into our dormitories and started the process of getting ready for our tournament.

Monday and Tuesday we played Florida, Kansas, and Texas in pool play. The Florida team had a retired professional soccer player on it and we lost to them 1-0. The Texas team was also very good with a former D1 player and we lost to them by a score of 3-2. We had chances to win both games but didn’t get the job done. We handled Kansas 5-1 and made it out of the pool play.

Wednesday and Thursday were now the medal rounds. We played Kansas again in the first round and won this time by a score of 6-0. Johnathan from Fishers scored his first-ever goal in soccer. Elliot from Lebanon scored a hat trick (three goals) as part of our success. The win put us in the gold medal game on Thursday. In the gold medal game we played a team from Washington D.C. that we had not seen before. It was a very good defensive game that we won by a score of 1-0. Our goalie, Charlie, had half a dozen spectacular saves as we closed out our tournament with a gold medal.

I was fortunate enough and honored to be part of Team Indiana’s first soccer match, see their first goal scored in competition, their first soccer team win and gold medal earned in soccer competition. I was proud of the hard work that the team had put in over the previous year and very satisfied with the result. As always working with Special Olympics the sportsmanship was excellent from all the players participating in the sport of soccer and displayed everywhere at the USA Games.

Following the closing ceremony on Friday, June 26, we flew home on our Dove flight Saturday morning. The trip was as unforgettable experience.