Highlands Ranch – Before they had a team, they had Danny Beck.
As a junior two years ago, Mountain Vista’s all-state quarterback and pitcher volunteered as a teacher aide in a significant-needs class for children with mental and physical challenges.
In the cafeteria during lunch, Beck would slide into a chair at the table where the students sat. Soon, the remaining seats were filled with athletes, cheerleaders and other popular kids.
The school spirit began to build, and last winter Beck and his friends put together a basketball team. Each of the dozen kids in the significant-needs class signed up.
They played six games against other teams made up of special athletes from other Douglas County schools, ending with a 1-5 record. But they won over the campus completely.
This fall, Mountain Vista is one of five teams in the county’s new Unified Soccer League.
Beck’s big-man-on-campus cachet helped turn Mountain Vista’s special-needs athletes into campus all-stars, a legacy that’s outlasted him there.
The student body follows the outcome of the games, they know all the players’ names, the cheerleaders perform at their games and the Student Government Association bankrolls their expenses. The regular athletes insisted their counterparts have official uniforms, not T-shirts and gym shorts.
“No way do I feel like I’m responsible for what this program has become,” said Beck, reached at the University of Southern California, where he is a pitcher on the baseball team.
“But I’m proud to have been a part of it.”
When Gabby McLeran, a senior on the 10-member soccer squad, walks down the hall, other students call out her name.
“They say, ‘Hello Gabby. How are you?”‘ she said with a big smile.
At soccer practice last week, more than 30 teen volunteers showed up to help. Danny’s younger brother, Ryan, was among them.
“We’re undefeated,” explained Jay Spain, the team’s leading scorer who has years of training through Special Olympics. Mountain Vista beat rival ThunderRidge in the season opener.
Tonya Harding, 19, scored her first goal at practice Tuesday. Sort of.
She shuffled her feet, moving the ball down the field with taps rather than kicks, until it rested 10 feet from the goal. She backed up two steps and charged at the ball, hitting a slicing shot high and to the left. The net willowed in response.
The ball remained on the turf where she had lined up the shot, as her white sneaker fell to the turf inside the goal. Players and coaches laughed and clapped.
Tonya grabbed up the errant Nike and raced up the hill, full of laughter and squeals, to tell her mother all about it.
Linda Harding has seen the difference that inclusion and competition have made in her daughter. Before Tonya joined the team, such attention from regular students would have terrified her.
“In other schools, they just put them off in a room somewhere and forget about them,” she said.
Linda’s brother had also grown up isolated by his mental challenges, so Tonya’s inclusion has meant the world, she said.
“This lets them meet other kids they would never get the chance to meet,” she said. “A lot of times these other kids feel uncomfortable, and don’t want anything to do with them.”
Melissa Rieger, a senior who has played a host of sports at Mountain Vista and volunteers with the squad, said the Unified team has also changed the once-shy sophomore Tony Barela.
She remembers Tony’s first score in a basketball game last season. No one seemed to notice the game was being played with a small foam ball, like the one Tony practiced with at home, because he could handle it in his tiny hands.
Tony caught the pass near the goal, wheeled around on his heels and put up a shot that touched nothing but net. The student cheering section went wild.
“The look on his face was amazing,” Rieger said. “Everybody was cheering. I won’t ever forget that.”
Tony played it down, the way athletes do.
“I hit that shot 45 times,” Tony said, explaining his practice regimen, during a break in soccer practice.
After the 45-minute scrimmage, teacher Eileen Hernley stepped on the field. The players met at midfield. They joined hands over their heads, and chanted the team name, “Golden Eagles,” as they let the tower of hands collapse, a sports ritual that plays out daily on countless fields by countless athletes.
The regular athletes see the Unified players as equals, insisted Becca Cushing, a star goalie on the varsity soccer team, who overhauled her class schedule to be head coach of the Unified team.
“They show up to practice, they train hard and they have fun,” Cushing said. “That’s what an athlete is. That’s what an athlete does. They do the best they can, and that’s all you can ask of a player.”
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
