“I can’t wait to go back and hangout with them again. I love them,” my volunteer-working partner and I said after finishing our shift at the Special Olympics. What started as a way to complete required service hours, turned out to be a life changing experience for us.
When applying to college, the general recommendation for service hours is between 50 and 200 hours; however, the quality of your service, your motivation for volunteering, and the impact it had on you and the community means much more. My parents had been urging me to find places to volunteer and to build my hours for college. They suggested working in fields that interested me, instead of volunteering just to get hours.
I’m particularly interested in sports because I, myself, am an athlete. I fell in love with soccer at a young age, and currently play for high school and club. So, when I was looking up organizations with my parents, the Special Olympics caught my eye.
I called my friend, Esmé Bower, who also needed service hours, and asked her if she would be interested in doing it with me. We signed up to work at the Special Olympics Soccer and Volleyball Tournaments, which are both all-day events.
Going into the Special Olympics, we only considered volunteering an opportunity to fulfill our hours.When we had to be up and at the fields at 7:30 a.m., we were not happy. I remember saying “I can’t believe I’m up right now when I could be sleeping,” at least five times.
That grumpy feeling eventually left when I refereed my first soccer game. I was watching the teams warm up and I was so fascinated with how much dedication they had to the game. One team warmed up for over an hour, a routine that I had never seen before. Their attention to detail in their warmup shows their commitment to the game. The ages of the athletes ranged from 20-40 years old. Players regularly play in regional teams where their level of play is more recreational. On this day, they were there to have fun, but their love for their sport also motivated them to win.
As soon as the game started, I was standing on the sideline refereeing, in charge of watching the lines and the ball went out of bounds. When one of the athletes, Danny, was being called off the field for substitution, he didn’t even realize he was being called off. He was so happy to be there that he kept playing, and they patiently continued to call his name before play could resume. This was the moment it all changed for me. These players were solely happy to be there. I saw my younger self in their love of their sport. As someone who is looking to play soccer in college, it was nice to see the fun side of the sport rather than the more competitive stressful side.
These athletes had no idea that they helped change my life for the better. Thanks to them, I was able to see a whole new beauty in the sports world.
Esmé Bower had a similar experience, but she started off with a positive mindset, undeterred by 7:30 a.m. arrival time, “because we were doing something for the community.” However, she quickly found that volunteering often means being flexible.
“I started off refereeing for volleyball, when someone came in and asked me to score keep soccer,” said Bower, who plays volleyball for her high school and club team.“I was scared because I didn’t know anything about soccer.”
Throughout the day, Bower began to warm up to the sport, and even started making friends with the athletes.
“It was nice to get to know them and their personalities,” Bower said. It was talking with the athletes that drew her in, and created an opportunity for her to form a different bond.
“You get to see them more as human beings than athletes, and it opened up a whole new perspective to a world I had no insight into,” she said.
For the rest of the three games, we worked together and constantly laughed together. We admired the players, and couldn’t stop talking about how much we loved being there.
“When I noticed that the coaches were all standing on the sidelines and were just so supportive and happy to be there, [it was inspiring]” Bower explained. “Seeing young people wanting to support these athletes was really sweet to see, and a life changing moment for me, due to my previous lack of involvement with the less fortunate,” Bower recalled.
Nearing the end of our shift, we found ourselves sad to leave. Yes, it was a long day at the Southern California Special Olympics with seven hours in the sun, around 80 athletes and around 25 volunteers, but the athletes made it so much better. In a world that’s challenging, they taught us to be more open minded to new opportunities and realize the inner beauties in life.
