In London, thousands gathered on Wednesday to watch as two Jamaican track stars, Usain Bolt and Johan Blake, limbered up for the 200-meter sprint. At the Rebecca School for developmentally disabled children in Manhattan, however, Sam Wilkinson had eyes for only one race: the one between his team, East Side Story, and its rival, the Subway Stars.
?I?m pretty sure I?m going to win,? Sam, 18, predicted before running in the Rebecca Olympics? sprinting event, which involved five laps in a small, sunny gym, roughly equivalent to 200 meters, or an eighth of a mile. ?In time trials, I clocked the current fastest time.?
In the next event, shot-put, Sam hovered behind each competitor as he or she tried to toss a rubber ball across the gym. Wearing a white T-shirt he had decorated himself with a Batman symbol drawn with black marker, he watched intently as a teammate sent the ball 15 feet. ?The score is like China,? he said, referring to that country?s standing at the time atop the London Olympics medal count. ?We?re kicking butt!?
And when his teammate Rudy Thomas?s soccer ball missed the net three times in a row during the soccer shootout, Sam sighed. ?Another miss ? we?re having a slump!?
Not everyone in the Rebecca Olympics, whose participants all fall somewhere on the autism spectrum, was quite so competitive. But all of the teenagers stretched, ran, threw and kicked, complimented other players on their uniforms and cheered them on. And that kind of engagement, Rebecca staff members said, means their developmental therapy is working.
For Ryan Lambiasi, the physical education teacher at the school, on East 30th Street, determining winners is less important than teaching his students to want to win. The teachers have taken advantage of the London Olympics to stir the students? interest and help them make sense of ?who they are and how they fit into the world,? said Tina McCourt, the school?s program director. (It may sound like a common enough problem, but it is especially difficult for autistic children to grasp, she said.)
The concept of competition helps them relate to other people, and the Olympics ? the grandest international competition of them all ? give them another opportunity to comprehend the outside world, Ms. McCourt said.
Setting and achieving goals is a form of therapy, too, staff members said. Even cheering on their teammates draws the students out, making them less likely to shut others out.
The students? deficits are not physical, but neurological. Those with developmental disorders have trouble ordering and processing sensory information; even an activity like kicking a ball back and forth can pose a challenge.
?It?s not a physical or muscular thing,? said Gil Tippy, the school?s clinical director. ?It?s the fact that they can?t put it all together into a plan.?
To prepare students for the Rebecca Olympics, the entire summer curriculum has taken on an Olympic flavor. Each day, teachers explain what events are happening in London, tack new paper bronze, silver and gold medals onto a ?Team U.S.A.? banner hanging in the gym in keeping with the Americans? medal tally, and talk about the Games? origins in ancient Greece.
When the long-anticipated Rebecca Olympics finally got under way on Wednesday, Sam, who said running was his favorite event, set a new personal best in the five-lap sprint, 52.7 seconds, just as he had hoped. His classmate Ruben Flores, 13, of the Subway Stars, was somewhat less ambitious: as he neared the end of his first lap, he stuck out his tongue at a volunteer, then waved his arms like an octopus, grinning.
?I don?t like running that much, because I have asthma,? Ruben said later. ?Also, we all know the zombies are coming, and we?ve got to train.?
But for the shot-put, Ruben was all swagger and smiles. He dramatically extended his right arm toward the gym teacher and lifted his left elbow, ball in hand, posing like Usain Bolt after winning a race. He then hurled the ball 15 feet, watched it bounce away and grinned as the applause came raining down.
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