The ball is snapped to the quarterback. He drops back, scanning the field. His teammate catches it in the endzone. The whole sideline erupts with cheers, while the defense gets ready to go out on the field and defend their home turf. This is Fishers Unified Flag Football.
The Fishers Unified Flag Football team is a varsity sport that puts students with and without intellectual disabilities on the same gridiron. Flag football and track and field, make up the unified sports program here at Fishers. Fishers has many opportunities to bring students with intellececutal disabilities together with peers, including a Best Buddies program and a Unified Dance team. These programs encourage social inclusion, new friendships and breaking down stereotypes.
“It does a lot of dispelling stereotypes, and you can see just how able everybody is,” said David Rawlins, head coach of the flag football team. “And it is not just unified with and without those with intellectual disabilities, but also, it is a coed sport.”
Three athletes and two partners are on the field at one time. The structure of the game is very similar to that of traditional flag football, incorporating many of the same rules and actions. However, what makes this version truly unified is the integration of partners. Partners are students without intellectual disabilities and have many roles on the team. They actively support the athletes by assisting in plays and helping communicate with the athletes when the coaches are unable to. Off the field, they cheer on their teammates, offer encouragement, and help build a positive and inclusive environment. This dynamic helps build teamwork, boost confidence and camaraderie. This makes the game both competitive and inclusion driven.
“I would say everyone, athletes and partner, get closer throughout the season,” said junior Cale Seymour, a partner on the team. “I am now basically family with some of the guys I’ve met through this sport.”
In recent years, the program has grown tremendously. Senior Carter Schmitt, the quarterback of the team, and Rawlins both commented on the growth they have seen during their time on the team.
“My freshman year there were like eight people on the team and throughout my flag football career it grew,” Schmitt said. “It is just great to see more people join and I just love seeing the new people and I just love including more people in unified.”
The current team is the largest group the program has ever seen.
“When I started coaching, we had teams of about 15 kids,” Rawlins said. “And last year we had our biggest team of 39 and this year we have we had over 80 kids come to the callout meeting.”
Inclusion is the main focus of the team, but it is not the only goal for each season. The team does their best every week to win games, with practices multiple times a week, starting in the beginning of August. Currently, they are 4-0 and are chasing their first sectional title in school history.
“We’re going after a state title this year, so we’ve had several run-ins with getting to the finals of sectionals,” said Rawlins. “We have not yet gotten over that hump. We’re really trying to make a push to get out of sectionals and see what we can do at a state title.”
