Special Olympics
For 38 years the Kiwanis Club of Seminole Breakfast fired up its grills to prepare and serve free lunches for all Special Olympians, coaches and volunteers who participated in the annual Pinellas County Regional Basketball competition held in December. In 2012 the club added a second Special Olympic event by providing lunches to all participants in the Pinellas County Summer Games held annually each February at Osceola Middle School. Since 2015 a team of volunteers from All Children’s Hospital’s “Fit 4 All Kids” program has joined us in our lunch preparations. They prepare a delicious nutritious treat which is included in the hundreds of lunches served.
Unfortunately, the December 2020 through February 2022 all Special Olympic events were cancelled due to COVID-19. But in July 2023 the club resumed preparing and serving hundreds of free lunches again joined by our partners from All Children’s Hospital. This time, however, we did so at the Special Olympic Pinellas/Hillsborough regional swimming competition held at The Long Center in Clearwater. Since the Long Center’s pool complex closed in February for renovations, this year we’ll be feeding in August hundreds of lunches to Special Olympic athletes, coaches, volunteers and families at the North Shore Aquatic Complex in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Special Olympics provides free year-round sports training and competition for children 8 years of age with no upper age limit who have intellectual and developmental disabilities. Special Olympics Florida, an accredited program of Special Olympics Inc., was founded in 1972 and is one of the largest volunteer-driven athletic organizations in the state. In Florida there are 51,000 volunteers and approximately 77,000 athletes who participate in 25 different Olympic-type sports competitions.
This year marks the 57th anniversary of the worldwide Special Olympics movement which now includes more than 5.3 million Special Olympics athletes in 177 countries who participate in 30+ Olympic-style individual and team sports. The Athlete’s Oath: “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt”.
