Wellington Heights athletes earn medals at Special Olympics Championships

LONDON – Special Olympic athletes from Wellington Heights Secondary School, along with their peer helpers, won a variety of medals in bocce ball and track and field events at the Special Olympics Provincial School Championships May 26 to 28 at the University of Western Ontario.  

The athletes were coached by WHSS teachers Christine Chambers, Brittany Heffernan and Adam Teeter.

To qualify for the provincial championships in track and field, WHSS ran its own trials in the fall in running and throwing events for students from LRC-10 classes and peer helpers to record their distances and times and then submitted these results to Special Olympics.  

The Special Olympics organization selected a four-member unified team to attend based on their scores, making the WHSS team one of 30 teams that qualified.  Representing Wellington Heights in Track and Field were Jason Davidson – paired with peer helper Hannah Rundle, and Kaden Fraser – paired with peer helper Faith Wilde.

At the Provincial Championships, Davidson and Rundle won a gold medal in  shot put and silver medals in standing long jump and the 200m race.  

Fraser and Wilde won a gold medal in standing long jump, a silver medal in shotput, a bronze medal in the 200m race, and finished fourth place in the 100m race.  

They finished the day as a team with a four by 100m relay where they won another gold medal in their category.

In order to qualify for the Provincial Championships in bocce ball, a qualifier tournament was held at the Royal Distributing Athletic Performance Centre this past February.  

WHSS was one of 12 unified teams competing in London from across the province of Ontario.  

Representing Wellington Heights in bocce ball were Austin LaCombe, Savannah Copland, Macey McDermott, Wyatt Smaglinski, Nick Duxbury and peer helper Noah Schlosser.

At the Provincial Championships on day one, the WHSS bocce ball team had two wins and one tie, which put them into the top category of the competition.  

On day two, the WHSS team went undefeated in the round robin play, had an overtime win in the semi-finals, and then played a hard-fought championship final game where they walked away with the silver medal.

Additionally, this year Heffernan and Chambers decided to put forward Wellington Heights to become a Unified Champion School.

 A Unified Champion School program is one that fosters sustainable, inclusive school environments by promoting social inclusion through intentionally designed activities that drive system-wide change.  

The organization has three foundational pillars and schools must complete many components which allow schools to reach different levels of achievement. 

This past week, WHSS staff received notice from the governing organization, recognizing Wellington Heights’ outstanding commitment to inclusion through the Unified Champion Schools (UCS) program. 

The UCS initiative fosters sustainable, school-wide inclusion by bringing together students with and without intellectual disabilities through sport, youth leadership, and whole-school engagement, officials state in a press release.  

“These pillars work together to build meaningful relationships, strengthen school culture, and ensure all students feel welcomed and actively included in every aspect of school life,” the release continues. 

Wellington Heights Secondary School was recognized for 2025-2026 as a silver-level unified champion school, reflecting its continued leadership and positive impact across the UCS pillars.

Principal Brent Bloch stated, “This recognition is an incredible honour for our school and a tribute to the diligent efforts of our school staff to promote inclusion, and to seek out new and exciting opportunities for our students to learn and grow as athletes and as people.”  

He added, “I am very proud of the dedicated work of Christine Chambers, Brittany Heffernan, Adam Teeter, our LRC-10 teachers and educational assistants who all go above and beyond to continually design new experiential programming for our students in order to engage them in their learning and to prepare them for life beyond high school.  

“I am also very proud of our students who eagerly accept the challenges put before them by their teachers and continually strive to reach their goals.”