Members of the Bradley-Bourbonnais Special Olympics Unified basketball team are busy preparing to defend their IHSA State championship at the University of Illinois next month, but Boilermaker teammates Derek Otero and Calvin Kohl had good reason to miss a few days of preparation two weeks ago.

Otero and Kohl, both Bradley-Bourbonnais seniors, were joined by Elmhurst resident and 2018 York graduate Katie O’Neil as Special Olympics Illinois’ delegates for this year’s Special Olympics on Capitol Hill campaign.

The trio went to Washington D.C. from Feb. 9-11 to speak with 13 Illinois representatives in the United States congress and senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin and their staffs. They shared their stories of how Special Olympics and their Unified Champion Schools program, a program that uses sports to harbor inclusion with Special Olympians and their Unified partners as they aim to secure roughly $60 million in combined funding for health and education.

“I think it was a really special opportunity to give back to an organization that’s fostered so many special relationships like Derek and I have, and also build a positive community,” Kohl said. “While we were there we were advocating for $39 million for Unified champion schools and $21 million for health initiatives through Special Olympics. I looked at it as a way to share my story, how it’s impacted my life and to give back to the organization.”

Otero and Kohl met when they were freshmen four years ago through the school’s Best Buddies program, which pairs intellectually and developmentally disabled students with their peers. While they’re fortunate to attend a school that offers such a rich collection of events - the upcoming Best Buddies Talent Show is their next big event - Otero said Special Olympics is his favorite way to connect with his friends.

“Special Olympics is the best thing of my life because I get to be inclusive and get the opportunity to play at my type of level, meeting great friends,” Otero said. “It’s really a blessing being in Special Olympics.”

While Kohl and Otero focused on the educational side of Special Olympics, sharing their personal stories of the importance of it in their lives, O’Neil spoke about the health aspects and benefits, both physical and mental.

“I told them that it’s important for athletes to get their hearing checked, their vision checked, get shoes, personal hygiene stuff and how I used to be lazy, and Special Olympics got me to be a lot more active and a lot happier,” O’Neil said.

While she was a York student, O’Neil was a member of the gymnastics team. After she graduated, she saw that her former coach, Nick Criel, was looking for volunteers to help the school’s Special Olympics team. Criel informed her that she could do more than volunteer, she herself could be a Special Olympian.

It’s through Special Olympics that O’Neil found herself and the confidence to achieve her goals. She got her CNA license, which allowed her to become a paraprofessional at Edison Elementary in Elmhurst. And when school’s out for the summer, she can be found greeting Chicago Cubs fans at Wrigley Field as a greeter and ticket scanner.

A prime example of the benefits the Special Olympics can have, O’Neil had a message for anyone considering joining.

“I would tell them to do it,” O’Neil said. “It will change your life, your family’s life, make you feel happy and proud you’re helping other people with intellectual disabilities.”

The trio was joined by O’Neil’s mom, Cathy, and Amanda Walker, a special education teacher and the Special Olympics coordinator at Bradley-Bourbonnais. A Special Olympics swim coach for seven years, overseeing the school’s Unified program has been new for Walker, and with students like Otero and Kohl by her side, she knows how lucky she is.

And so does Special Olympics president and CEO David Evangelista, who shared something with their group while they were in the nation’s capitol that she couldn’t have found to be more true.

“He said we need more Special Olympics because we need more Calvins in the world,” Walker said. “We need more people like Calvin, we need more people like Derek. We need them to realize, other people to realize, that they can have meaningful relationships and that inclusion is important.”