Unified Sports offers athletes with and without disabilities the chance to compete on an equal playing field — an experience many recognize from the Special Olympics. At Fayetteville High School, one algebra teacher is working to turn their Unified Sports club into something more. Enter Bulldog Buddies, a club that invites all students to come together to support the Bulldog community. Math and special education teacher Michelle Brunke is liaison for Unified Champion Schools and coordinator of Bulldog Buddies, which was revamped last year. She says her involvement began when she was asked to coach the school's unified basketball team.
Brunke: That was kind of my first introduction to unified sports with Special Olympics. And the teacher that had been in charge of unified sports ended up taking a different position this year and asked if I would take over. So as a piece of that, I also started the Bulldog Buddies Unified club. With Unified Champion Schools, there's three pieces to it. There is the Unified Sports, which is students with and without disabilities participating in Special Olympics events together. There's a youth leadership piece, and that's where our club kind of comes into play. And then there's whole school engagement to promote an inclusive community and environment at the school.
Travis: Give me an example of some of the activities y'all have participated in or hosted this past year.
Brunke: We're trying to do at least one large club event every month on the first Friday of the month. Some of those things have looked like foursquare and sidewalk chalk outside, just getting to know our peers. We also hosted the weekend of homecoming — we had a '70s disco party during our advisory time, and that was inclusive. We have something called advisory, which is like RTI sessions, and students can sign up for where they want to go get help from teachers or clubs, things like that during the day. We also have our structured learning students who sometimes aren't signing up for RTI sessions — we include them in all of our club activities as well. So our '70s disco party was kind of a safe, inclusive, smaller version of like a homecoming dance during the day. It was just a really beautiful thing to see all the students coming together and getting to know each other. Most recently, we had a Valentine's party, just kind of making little Valentine's cards for our friends, for teachers that are in our lives, things like that — celebrating friendship and inclusion. We've also done some inclusive community service projects. Community service is now a requirement for graduation at the high schools, and those can be a little bit more difficult for some of our students to access. So we're trying to plan a few inclusive community service events as well.
Travis: Yeah, it's been fun to look at y'all's Instagram. Y'all are just having a blast. And it's cool to look at the comments — it seems like everyone in the club is pretty engaged.
Brunke: I do feel like there was a club before, but I don't feel like it was publicized quite as much in the past. We really are trying to create a lot of awareness of our club at the school. The unified sports are what people kind of think of with Special Olympics. But I think in terms of an inclusive community at the school, the club is really playing a big role in that. We do try and post different pictures and things about our events, and we try and post a flyer about upcoming events ahead of time so that students know what to anticipate and what to sign up for.
Travis: What drove you to expand past just unified sports and make it more of a community endeavor?
Brunke: I feel like it's something that was just kind of missing. We really do try and get our students involved in different clubs and activities at Fayetteville High School. I feel like this was just a missing piece — a place where students could come together with and without disabilities and really get to know each other and build genuine friendships. I love seeing these kids that are playing sports together or showing up at a club activity now, seeing each other in the hallways, knowing each other by name. That friendship extends beyond just the club meeting or just the basketball game. That's been one of the most rewarding things to see from my end.
Travis: They're actually becoming friends. What other impacts have you seen on these students?
Brunke: I think the leadership piece — my own daughter has special needs as well. She has autism. I've been a part of different communities in the region, interacting with 99 Balloons, different therapy groups, things like that. I've seen some communities around. But in the school setting, seeing all of those pieces come together — being a special education teacher, being a parent of a student who, when she was younger, just struggled to make friends — I've loved seeing her now step into a leadership role in the club and really help plan and participate in all of the activities that we're doing. Giving lots of students those kinds of opportunities for inclusive leadership and participation has just been really rewarding.
Travis: I'd love to hear more about the Unified Sports and Arkansas Special Olympics. Can you talk about the connection and what you all have done with that organization?
Brunke: There are two different pieces to Special Olympics. There's the traditional Special Olympics, which I think is what most people think of. But there's also unified sports, which is a combination of students with and without disabilities playing together. We do have traditional teams at Fayetteville High School as well. For example, our traditional basketball team won the local tournament, and they'll be participating at the Tournament of Champions in Benton or Bryant on March 19 and 20. Our unified team actually just traveled to Cabot and competed there in the regional event against a team from Hot Springs — played a very competitive game of basketball and unfortunately came up a little short. We didn't make it to the state finals. But just seeing those kids compete together — in unified sports, they really encourage competition. You are there to win, you're there to score points. But I love that our kids have gotten to know each other so much. Every single person on our team is getting the ball, getting to shoot, participating together. There's not one person dominating any piece of the game. It really is a team camaraderie that's developed, and that's extending beyond just the court. They're participating in activities with the club, seeing each other at school, in the lunchroom. That extends beyond the court, and that's what we hope for.
Travis: Where do you hope to take this?
Brunke: I really am hoping to expand our participation in unified sports significantly. This was my first year taking over both the club and the unified sports piece. We did participate in the basketball competitions, but there's things like bowling, pickleball, soccer, softball, volleyball, Topgolf — just all kinds of opportunities for students to be working together. I'm hoping to recruit some other staff members or volunteers to help coach some of those sports. I need to be in the classroom helping students with algebra sometimes during that advisory time, so I can't be coaching every different sport. I really need to get some other staff members involved so that we can expand our opportunities for students to participate.
Travis: So there's one call to action for faculty — perk your ears, Michelle could use some help. What else can we look forward to in the near future?
Brunke: We do have a track meet coming up — I think a combination of traditional and unified events. I'm looking forward to seeing our athletes there. We want to make it a really exciting crowd cheering on all of our athletes, but I'm excited for our club members who are getting to know these students throughout the year to also be there supporting and cheering — really making it a more whole-school participation. Another thing I'm really excited about is prom coming up in the spring. The special education department puts on a smaller dance for some of our special education students, and this year they've asked our Bulldog Buddies club to have a small number of our buddies partnering up and participating in that dance to make it more of an inclusive environment. I'm very excited about that too.
Travis: Students, faculty, parents — where can we go to stay up to date with Bulldog Buddies?
Brunke: We do post on Instagram. That's a great place to just kind of see what we're up to. If somebody is looking to get involved — we're still in the very beginnings of this, it being my first year — one thing we are looking for is whether it's a company or family that would want to sponsor maybe some snacks for club meetings, things like that. High school students are always hungry, and we do have a lot of students that are wanting to participate. Having some snacks usually helps draw a good crowd.
That was Michelle Brunke, teacher and Bulldog Buddies coordinator, speaking with Ozarks at Large in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio One. You can find more on Bulldog Buddies, Unified Sports, and how to get in contact with Michelle about volunteer or sponsorship opportunities on our website.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
