by lauryn | Oct 20, 2025 | Fundraising, Uncategorized
At Special Olympics Illinois, your support goes far beyond the thrill of competition. It fuels leadership, health, inclusion, and lifelong growth for tens of thousands of people with intellectual disabilities in Illinois. While direct donations are always appreciated, Special Olympics Illinois offers many meaningful ways to support our mission.
Here are five alternative ways to build a stronger, healthier, more inclusive community this year and future years.
Planned Giving: Shape the Future with Your Legacy
You can create a legacy that celebrates ability, courage, and inclusion. A planned gift to Special Olympics Illinois ensures athletes have opportunities for generations to come.
Popular options include:
- Bequests: Including Special Olympics Illinois in your will or trust.
- IRA Charitable Rollovers: If you meet certain age requirements, you can make a tax-free gift directly from your IRA.
- Beneficiary Designation Gifts: Name Special Olympics Illinois as a beneficiary of your retirement plan, life insurance policy, or bank account.
Your plans today shape tomorrow’s possibilities. Through planned giving, your legacy can support athletes for years to come.
If you’ve already included Special Olympics Illinois in your estate plans, please let us know. We’d be honored to celebrate your commitment and welcome you into our SOILL Legacy Society.
Matching Gifts: Multiply Your Impact
Many companies offer matching gift programs to encourage employee philanthropy. Some even match gifts from spouses and retirees.
By simply completing a matching gift form, you may be able to double or even triple the impact of your donation. Every contribution helps athletes shatter stereotypes and achieve their personal bests on and off the field.
It’s easy to find out, right from our website, if your employer participates in a matching gift program.
In-Kind Donations: Give What You Have
Throughout the year, we rely on generous in-kind donations to support our events, programs, and operations. These gifts help us reduce costs and enhance the experience for athletes, families, and volunteers.
Examples of in-kind donations include:
- Facilities for competitions, meetings, and training
- Office supplies and printing services
- Professional services (e.g., photography, legal, marketing)
- Raffle and auction items (gift cards, electronics, sports memorabilia, vacation packages)
If you or your business can provide goods or services, we’d love to partner with you.
Vehicle Donation: Drive Inclusion Forward
Your old car, truck, boat, or RV can help drive opportunity and inclusion for Special Olympics Illinois athletes. Vehicle donations support year-round training and competition in 18 Olympic-style sports, as well as leadership and health programs for more than 20,000 individuals with intellectual disabilities statewide.
It’s easy, tax-deductible, and impactful. We’ll even handle the pickup and paperwork.
Learn more or start your donation.
Corporate Support: Partner With Purpose
Corporate partnerships are a powerful way to align your brand with a mission that matters. Whether through sponsorships, employee engagement, cause marketing, or custom campaigns, we work with businesses of all sizes to create meaningful impact.
Benefits of corporate support include:
- Brand visibility at statewide events
- Employee volunteer opportunities
- Positive community engagement
- Demonstrated commitment to inclusion and social responsibility
Let’s build a partnership that makes a difference.
Every Gift Builds a More Inclusive World
Your gift to Special Olympics Illinois provides more than opportunities to compete. You’re helping athletes grow on the field, as leaders, while prioritizing healthy living, and grow in every aspect of life.
Explore all the ways to give and together, we can change lives.
by lauryn | Oct 15, 2025 | Mission Focused, Region J, UCS/Unified, Uncategorized
UCS Brag Reports are back! These updates spotlight the amazing ways schools and students are making inclusion come alive — from creative ideas to inspiring moments that show the true impact of Unified Champion Schools. Check out Edwardsville High School students Dalton and Nora’s report below.
Dalton and Nora’s Brag Report
We have been super busy getting our Unified Club up and running for the year! Our Unified club at our school is Key Club. Key club has been off to a very strong start this year! We’re excited to share that some Unified Sports at our school are officially starting up, and our members are thrilled to be part of supporting such an inclusive and impactful program here. We have been getting our float ready for the Homecoming Parade as well as planning for a super fun Halloween themed party we call Fall Bash! More and more students are getting involved, and Key club is growing, serving, and making an impact. We can’t wait to keep the impact going!
We’re always looking to share inspiring stories! Submit your Unified Champion Schools brag report here.
by lauryn | Oct 9, 2025 | Athletes, Chicago Marathon, Healthy Athletes, Mission Focused, Uncategorized
As Health Messenger Alex Huegen prepares to run the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Sunday, October 12, his focus isn’t just on crossing the finish line, it’s on staying healthy in every sense of the word.
“Running is my stress relief,” Alex says. “But training for a marathon pushes that limit sometimes.” For Alex, mental health is just as important as physical endurance. He’s learned to lean on his support system — teammates, Law Enforcement Torch Run officers, coaches, staff, and board members — when the pressure builds. “Their encouragement gives me the extra mental push when I need it,” he says.
Alex’s journey as a Health Messenger has equipped him with tools to care for both body and mind. “It gave me the tools to know what’s best for my body, and sharing that with others makes me more confident,” he explains. “When I talk about drinking water, eating colorful foods, or stretching, it reminds me to do it too.”
Special Olympics Illinois health programs have played a key role in his training. “The education parts really helped me,” he says. “I learned stretching guidelines I use before and after practice. Healthy Habits showed me the importance of fueling my body with a variety of foods. And at USA Games in Orlando, Healthy Athletes helped me find the perfect running shoe, which has made a big difference keeping me injury free.”
On World Mental Health Day, Alex’s advice to fellow athletes is simple but powerful: “Listen to your body, not just your schedule. Fuel up, drink water, and stretch to stay loose. For mental strength, focus on one step at a time and remember why you love your sport. And when it gets tough, lean on your teammates, coaches, and the Special Olympics Illinois community. Their support will carry you through.”
Alex’s story is a reminder that health is holistic – physical, mental, and emotional — and that staying well means caring for all parts of yourself. Check out these tips for staying mentally strong.
by lauryn | Sep 17, 2025 | Mission Focused, Region J, UCS/Unified, Uncategorized
UCS Brag Reports are back! These updates spotlight the amazing ways schools and students are making inclusion come alive — from creative ideas to inspiring moments that show the true impact of Unified Champion Schools. Our next Brag Report features Jack and Grant from Limestone High School, who reflect on their experience at August’s Unified Generation Committee Boot Camp.
Jack and Grant’s Brag Report
Around 5:00 PM on Friday is when all the fun happened at Heartland Community College in Bloomington. Before the fun and hard work began, all the representatives and the co-chairs finally got to meet each other and learn more about each other. Before the icebreakers began, Jillian went over our itinerary for the amazing weekend to come. After this, we led an icebreaker game called “This or That?”. The game involved us, Jack and Grant, providing two options, usually related in some way (i.e. summer and winter), and the other members would go to the side of the room that had the designation of the option they preferred. After a couple of good questions, we moved on to the next icebreaker, led by the other co-chairs Nora Bennett and Dalton Wells. The icebreaker that Nora and Dalton led involved multiple pieces of string, a rubber band, and ten solo cups, and we had to use the rubber band and pieces of string to stack the cups up in a 2D-pyramid shape. The catch is that we weren’t allowed to touch the cups whatsoever, and we were given no instructions as to how to utilize the string and rubber band properly, which led to some very silly interactions with the cups and string! To cap-off the evening, the committee went to BloNo’s for pizza and golf!
Saturday was the busiest day of the weekend. We all woke up at various times, most before 7:00 AM, to prepare to head back to Heartland Community College by 8:30 AM for a long day of work. After getting some of the tiredness out of our system with the committee tech-guy, the entire committee and our advisors deliberated for two hours to try and determine the respect theme for this year. We were split off into groups of five pairs to discuss what themes we’d like to champion for the final vote, and we were all able to get a top-five list together extremely quickly! Some of the most common answers were themes centered around Wicked, Star Wars, and the new Fantastic Four movie, but there were plenty of other super unique answers! After at least an hour and an unheard-of four rounds of voting, we were able to vote on… nothing as far as these reporters are concerned, as we can’t share what we picked yet! Once the voting was done, we took part in a “team-building activity:” Capture the Flag! We not only did the classic one-team versus one-team iteration of the game, but we also did variations with four teams. After an hour of fun in the sun, we had lunch brought to us, which was a Moe’s nacho bar. We turned our lunch hour into a partial working lunch to discuss what we’d like to see for Respect Week merch. After lunch, we dove into an hour and a half of planning for the Unified Generation Summit in November, which involved discussing what Summit was for the uninitiated and getting a loose outline of each pair’s projects for Summit. After the Summit discussion, we had an hour-long presentation on proper social media etiquette for Unified-related activities. By 3:30 PM, it was time for the middle schoolers to leave and go home… but not us high schoolers! After they were gone, we dove into making some very fun group videos related to Summit, and we also did some silly solo content! By about 5:30 PM, we got to take a break to do more “team-building activities”… which was actually laser-tag! After an hour of chasing each other around with laser tag guns, we had Portillo’s hot dogs, salad, and pasta catered to Heartland for dinner! After that, we had time to socialize with movies and arts and crafts for an hour and a half before heading back to our hotel to recharge for Sunday!
Sunday was a short day just like Friday, but it was much more productive than Friday! After our obligatory 30 minutes of warm ups from 8:30-9:00 AM, we got to work discussing the importance of teamwork when being Unified Leaders, which involved playing the fan-favorite game of those who were on the UGC last year: reverse musical chairs! Reverse musical chairs is just like normal musical chairs where you take away a chair after each round, but the plot twist is that a player is NOT eliminated each round, so we therefore had to try and fit all 18 of us teenagers onto the amount of chairs we had, which was dwindling each round! For the purposes of the activity, we accomplished the goal of fitting all of us committee members onto a single chair, but we decided to do it with ZERO chairs for fun afterwards! That meant a few people had to act as human chairs for others to sit on… so it’s technically not possible, but who cares?! After that, we all spent roughly an hour and a half to two hours determining the colors for each day of Respect Week, what disability would be focused on with each day of Respect Week, and what activities we could do throughout Respect Week! For us committee members, it wasn’t super difficult since we knocked every task out in that timeframe, but we were told by Jillian afterwards that our work had saved multiple people, herself included, a week’s worth of work each! After that, we had Jason’s Deli sandwiches delivered to us, and we had our closing remarks on the weekend while grabbing our lunches. After many, many, MANY Midwestern-style goodbyes with everyone, we all headed home on our variously long car trips to cap off the extremely tiring, but fun weekend!
We’re always looking to share inspiring stories! Submit your Unified Champion Schools brag report here.
by lauryn | Sep 8, 2025 | Athletes, Mission Focused, Region G, Sports, State Tournaments, Uncategorized
By Randy Kindred
The dictionary tells us soar means to “fly or rise high in the air,” and to “increase rapidly above the usual level.” The Bloomington-Normal area has a different SOAR, which stands for Special Opportunities Available in Recreation.
Yet, this past weekend, SOAR managed to soar. Representing Region G, the organization spread its wings and took flight at the Special Olympics Illinois State Golf and State Softball Tournaments.
At Decatur’s Hickory Point Golf Course, SOAR had its best-ever six teams qualify for the 9-hole Unified state competition. At Springfield’s UIS Softball Complex, Coach Julie Smith’s hard-working team won twice to earn the gold medal in its division.
The golf tournament included more than 220 athletes, Unified partners, and coaches. The softball tournament attracted more than 630 athletes and coaches.
Here are some highlights from both events.
Back in the Swing
Among the SOAR duos at the golf tournament were Patrick Haynes and his Unified partner, Brian Lahr.
Lahr heads up the SOAR powerlifting program and also enjoys playing golf. SOAR had gone several years without a golf program but reinstituted the sport three years ago.
That was welcome news to Lahr, who competed in the 9-hole Unified state competition last year with a different partner. Haynes also had qualified for state, but he was unable to compete when his partner became ill.
Haynes and Lahr were all smiles Saturday after combining for a first round 92, fourth best out of 17 teams heading into Sunday’s final round.
“You hit some great drives today buddy. I’m proud of you,” Lahr told Haynes, who also competes in basketball and volleyball with Special Olympics Illinois.
“It was fun out there,” said Haynes, 26. “We did so well.”
On a glorious sunny day, Lahr’s heart was warmed by the camaraderie of the Special Olympics Illinois athletes.
“Golf is hard, so to see these guys perform at the level they do is a lot of fun,” Lahr said. “It’s watching all of them support each other. It’s like, ‘We’re all here to watch each other and support each other and have fun.’”
A Barry Good Time
The State Golf Tournament’s individual skills competition included 49-year-old Craig Barry.
Representing Region E, Barry lives at Good Shepherd Manor in Momence. He was quick to converse with volunteers running the skills events – the short putt, long putt, pitch shot, iron shot, wood shot, bunker shot and chip shot.
Barry placed fifth in his division, but felt like a winner because his parents, Jim and Martha Barry of LaGrange Park, had come to watch him. When they arrived, he hugged his father, then kissed his mother on the cheek.
“He doesn’t know a stranger,” Martha Barry said. “They’re all his friends.”
Craig Barry will tell you he has two homes, one with his boys and one with a computer.
“We’re the computer home,” Martha said, smiling.
“We come down (to Momence) usually every other week,” she added. “Next week, they’re having a big fall festival and he sings with the choir. They’re singing so we’ll be down.”
Together, They Won
Among the leaders on SOAR’s champion team for the State Softball Tournament was Travis Brady. He helped SOAR defeat the NWCSRA Wolves Green, 11-6, in the semifinals and PTOEC from Region J, 15-9, in the championship game.
“We had good communication and we played as a team,” Brady said after the first game. “For a second (this summer) we didn’t have any practices because of the heat and the weather. Once we got practices, we came together and communicated and hit well.”
Brady lives in Bloomington and also competes in basketball, volleyball, soccer and tennis. He said Special Olympics Illinois has provided him with a large network of friends.
In June 2026, he will join Team Illinois at the Special Olympics USA Games in Minneapolis, competing in Unified volleyball.
“It’s been on my bucket list for a long time,” he said. “I just want to enjoy it as much as I can.”
Smith also will be at the USA Games as the Team Illinois volleyball head coach. She said Brady is among “a good group of athletes” on her softball team.
“They listen and they work really hard at practices,” Smith said. “We’ve only had like four practices because of rain and heat. Every time we practice, they put 150 percent into it.
“I can’t tell you from the beginning until now how much they’ve improved. Every game it seems like we just keep getting better and better. It’s all because they’re just working really hard out there.”
Learn more about the State Golf and Softball Tournaments, plus view photos and results as they’re available.
by lauryn | Sep 8, 2025 | Mission Focused, Organizational Impact, Uncategorized
“Because when I say what I think, my dreams—OUR dreams!—come true!”
Athlete Leader and Special Olympics Illinois Board of Directors member, Colleen Costello (Region J) reminded us during our Summer Games Opening Ceremony that real progress happens when we listen, collaborate, and dream together.
Her words reflect the heart of our movement: athletes shaping the future side-by-side with staff, volunteers, and partners.
As we shift into the rhythm of back-to-school season, I’ve been reflecting on the incredible momentum we’ve built together over the summer.
Our Summer Games were a powerful celebration of athlete achievement and community spirit. While the heat led to some necessary adjustments, the heart of the Games remained strong, thanks to the resilience of our athletes and the dedication of our volunteers, families, and staff. One of the most inspiring moments came when our longtime partners at Law Enforcement Torch Run (LETR) presented a check for more than $5.25 million in support of our mission. That kind of commitment fuels everything we do.
We celebrated a series of state tournaments across Illinois, including tennis, softball, and golf. Each event was a showcase of athleticism, teamwork, and joy, serving as a reminder of the power found in inclusive sports.
Alongside competition, our summer was packed with fundraising events that brought communities together in fun and meaningful ways. From Row 4 Dough to the Chicago Ducky Derby, followed by the Southern Illinois Ducky Derby, as well as Plane Pull and Truck Convoy in southern Illinois, these gatherings helped raise critical funds and awareness for our athletes.
The summer also marked the launch of the Center of Excellence (COE)—a simple and straightforward, online portal designed to help athletes, coaches, volunteers, and members of the circle of care register quickly and communicate in real time. It’s a big step forward in making our systems more efficient and accessible.
Now, we’re gearing up for a busy and exciting fall. On the fundraising front, we’re looking forward to:
O’Hare Plane Pull
Truck Convoys in Hoffman Estates and Tinley Park
Coaster Challenge
Champions Ball
We are preparing for our final state tournaments of the season, including Fall Games, bowling, flag football, and floor hockey. These competitions are a chance to close out the year strong and celebrate everything our athletes have accomplished.
And, we continue to build on the Core Four strategic framework as we move into Year Two of implementation. This work is helping us stay focused on what matters most and drive meaningful impact across the state.
Finally, we’re thrilled to begin preparations for the 2026 USA Games. It’s an exciting time for our athletes and delegation, and we can’t wait to share more in the months ahead.
There are so many ways to be part of the movement this fall. Whether you cheer on our athletes, volunteer at a tournament, or participate in a fundraiser, your involvement makes a difference.
Visit SOILL.org to find your way to get involved.
With gratitude,
Pete Beale-DelVecchio
President & CEO, Special Olympics Illinois
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