Rant #3,149: We Are the Champions

I am back, and for once, I have a little good news to report.

This past Saturday, my son’s team in the 2022-2023 Nassau County Police Activity League Special Needs Unit Bowling League received their trophies as the first place team in the league for this season.

This team has been together several years now, and they finally reached the top rung of the league this season.

It was really a great season, and if you don’t think that bowling can be exciting, you weren’t around my son’s team this season.

The team bowled so well, picked each other up, and they bowled some incredible games leading to the title.

This league and the entire NC PAL SNU program, is a very unique one; from what I understand, there is nothing else like it in the country.

The program was set up so that boys and girls—and now men and women—who have special needs could find a safe and comforting and yes, highly competitive outlet to participate in many different activities, including everything from archery to yoga, basketball, baseball, bowling, as well as many other social activities.

These now young adults have been labeled their entire lives by social norms that pretty much exclude developmentally disabled people, or at least classify them as something less than the norm, whether it is in school or in social settings.

I, personally, have learned so much about these people, adding on to what I have learned through my son’s own life during his nearly 28 years, when he was classified and misclassified and we were told by those with doctoral degrees that we should prepare him for the scrap heap.

We never believed that, and his story is far from being unique; I have spoken to other parents with children in this program, and one after the other, I pretty much hear the same story from each one of them.

And then I get to know these young men and women through the great equalizer—sports—and I find out that not only can these supposedly discarded people play sports with the best of them, but they can do just about anything they set their minds to—have jobs, socialize, go to college, and do just about everything that at one time they were told they could not do.

My wife and I are just so proud of out son in general, but when he excels at a sport, it just brings it to another level.

This past bowling season, during the 30-week session, my son never missed a week, playing in all 60 games, a mark reached by just him and three others.

He rolled 8,468 total pins, which placed him fourth overall in the league.

His 141 average was seventh best in the league—and up six pins from the prior season--and his high game was 216 with two turkeys, or two instances of getting three strikes in a row—which included one time with four in a row.

His high series—two consecutive games totaled together—was 386.

As the cleanup bowler for his team, he lead them in all the categories I just described to you.

He capped everything off this past Saturday, when in a game that did not add to the standings, his team beat the second place team in the one game they bowled before the awards were given out, and he bowled a 171.

I just really enjoyed watching how each member of his team picked the other up when it was needed, and the team bowled some incredible games when they were all on for a particular week.

I hate to harp on this, but I will anyway.

When my son was about five or six, our local school system sent him to a doctor to determine his mental capabilities.

This doctor had every degree imaginable on the wall of her office, so on face value alone, you had to be impressed by the level this doctor had reached.

Well, she saw my son for about five minutes, if even that, during which she took him in the hall and played some type of short game involving a rubber ball.

She came back into the office, and flat out told my wife and I (paraphrased), “You should be prepared for the worst with your son. He is not going to be able to do much of anything as he gets older …I would classify him as ‘mentally r--.”

Well, we were aghast as she told us this, and I let this woman with all her degrees have it after I heard this. “You have no idea whet you are talking about … this kid is as ‘mentally r—“ as you and I are … and I am reporting you to the school, because you should not be determining any kid’s future like that after maybe five minutes of seeing him.”

I did just that and we never heard form this so-called doctor again.

All the while, my son had completely defied whatever she said: although yes, he is “developmentally disabled,” he graduated high school, he has a job, he has social contacts, and he can play sports—not just bowling, but basketball, and he played seven years of Little League baseball.

And yes, he is quite smart … maybe not the conventional “smart,” but this guy turned himself from coal to diamonds with a lot of hard work and ability far beyond what this idiot doctor told us way back when.

Congrats to my son, congrats to his team, congrats to the entire program, an entity that proves time and time again that no one should ever be labeled as “lost causes.”

Here is a link to the program’s web site: https://g.co/kgs/XpBK61

Here is the link to the program’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NCPALSNU?mibextid=ZbWKwL