Zariah Zarate beamed with joy Wednesday evening, watching intently from a spot on the court with her parents as the Brownsville Independent School District launched the Unified UIL Interscholastic Basketball League’s inaugural season.
The league will kick off play with games Monday. It is the result of a 12-year effort by Zariah’s father Sergio Zarate and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle to pass Senate Bill 776 during the 87th Texas Legislature.
Otherwise known as Zariah’s Law, the bill took effect Sept. 1 2021. It will mean that children like Zariah will have the chance to play competitive sports, not just for the competitive aspect but also to receive the long-term benefits of coaching and being part of a team.
The inaugural ceremony took place in the Hanna Early College High School Gymnasium, with Zariah, a special needs student and sophomore at Veterans Memorial ECHS, seated cross-legged on a cushioned folding chair among school officials near the lectern from which the historic event unfolded.
BISD has been working since last year to implement Zariah’s Law. Wednesday the district rolled out the new UIl-sanctioned league and its six varsity-level teams. Middle schools will be added soon.
The ceremony was to introduce the community to unified, co-educational athletics and to announce coaches and the first teams in the Unified UIL Interscholastic Basketball League.
Each of BISD’s six early college high schools will field a co-educational team of 10 members, with teams playing in games comprised of three special needs athletes with an intellectual disability and two non-disabled players.
The teams will play each other in games with seven-minute quarters and regular UIL rules, Sandra Powers, BISD Assistant Athletic Director and Director of Unified Interscholastic Sports, said. The “No pass, No play” rule will apply.
“There’s no holding back. It’s a regular basketball game. They’re partnered, three students with an intellectual disability with two students who do not,” Powers said Thursday.
“This is now a sanctioned UIL athletic event. It’s a new division of athletics.” with basketball in the winter and track and field in the spring. “It’s going to be integrated into the infrastructure we already have in those sports,” she said.
Retired state Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, sponsored the Senate bill. It directed the UIL to work with Special Olympics Texas to implement team sports for students with intellectual disabilities.
The result is a division of unified athletics within UIL under which UIL member schools can become a Special Olympics Texas Unified Champion Schools.
BISD schools have done so, paving the way for the district’s high schools to have teams advance into district and area competition and ultimately state-championship games just like regular BISD teams.
The goal is for students with intellectual developmental disabilities to experience the same opportunities that non-disabled students experience, Athletic Director Gilbert Leal said during the program.
“Unified Champion Schools empowers young students to develop school environments where acceptance and inclusion between students with and without intellectual disabilities fosters respect, dignity and unity by utilizing the programs and initiative of Special Olympics,” a fact sheet about Unified Champion Schools on the UIL website states.
The approach “combines students with intellectual disabilities (athletes) and students without intellectual disabilities (unified partners), on sports teams for training and competition. Unified Sports develops socially inclusive communities by utilizing sports as a catalyst for change,” the fact sheet states.
Near the end of the program, Superintendent Rene Gutierrez led the audience in reciting the Brownsville ISD Inclusion Pledge:
“As a member of the Brownsville ISD family, I pledge to look for the lonely, the isolated, the left out, the challenged and he bullied. I pledge to overcome the fear of difference and replace it with the power of inclusion. I choose to include.”
Establishing the new league and implementing the provisions of the senate bill positions BISD as a trailblazer in the Rio Grande Valley.
“There was a lot of love in the room last night and that’s what we wanted to accomplish,” Powers said.
“We are the trailblazers and that’s why I wanted to recognize the principals. It would have been easy for them to say, ‘oh, we’re going to do this with everything else that’s going on?’ (recovering learning losses because of the pandemic) … and I went to the head basketball coaches, too, and I said we’re going to need to share your gym space and some of your equipment, and they said yes … there was no hesitation on anybody’s part. …It’s very historic, it really is. It’s a new revolution, I think, for the athletic world and just for acceptance and having more students feel that they are part of the school community,” she said.
Powers is known for having established the BISD Buddy Fun Meet for special needs students 23 years ago and working behind the scenes on inclusion issues. As Director of Unified Interscholastic Sports, she is in charge putting the unified sports concept into practice.
“It’s all going to be run alongside the general UIL athletic program. It’s gonna be good. We’re going to do a modified program for the middle schools this year. The high school division is the varsity division, full throttle, playoffs and everything. The middle school will be more of a modified program, a pilot program this year … because it’s not a sanctioned UIL activity for middle schools — yet,” she said.
The law elevated adaptive athletics to a level comparable with regular UIL athletics. It instructed the UIL to create an adaptive sports program available to public middle school, junior high school, and high school students in Texas. Under SB 776, UIL is required to adopt rules establishing eligibility requirements for participation and best practices for school districts to incorporate adaptive sports.
BISD is the first district in the Valley to implement Unified Interscholastic Sports, but the rest of the Valley will be watching. Enrique Cantu, assistant athletic director at Grulla ISD, attended Wednesday’s event as an observer for the Region 7 Athletic Director’s Association.
