After eight years, the 15 members of Sedona Red Rock High School’s co-ed basketball team, the Sedona Red Rockers, will be taking part in the Special Olympics of Arizona Mountain — North Monument Youth Basketball and Skills Competition on Tuesday, Feb. 20, at the Flagstaff High School. About 150 students from seven schools in northern Arizona are scheduled to participate.
“Every single year it has gotten canceled due to weather, or I had a death in the family and I had to cancel it,” SOCSD special education teacher and head coach Tiffany Wilson said. “Something [has] prevented us from going every single year that we’ve been trained for this event. So this will be our first time actually making it to the actual event if weather permits.”
“It’s a big tournament this year,” Special Olympics area director Rubett Garcia said. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun. I haven’t had this many before. The basketball event is important because our athletes and unified partners love to compete in competition. It’s also a qualifier for a state competition. They have to qualify at one of the area events in order to get in our state basketball and shoot competition, which is on March 8 and 9. It’s important for athletes, like anybody else, to have a well-rounded school experience in sports, as well as academics.”
The players in the Red Rockers range in age from 11 to 22. The team is composed of players with disabilities, who are referred to as athletes, and non-disabled players, who are referred to as unified partners, who compete as well and assist the team. The partnership creates what is referred to as a unified team, as opposed to a traditional team composed solely of players with disabilities.
“It’s shifted slowly from traditional to unified,” Garcia said. “Arizona was one of the first programs in the country to start, maybe about 13-14 years ago, and it’s taken off … We’ll always have a traditional model, but there’s a saying: Inclusion is a revolution. So it’s about inclusion and making sure our athletes have the same school experience as their peers.”
“Our team is doing a different type of basketball than your typical basketball,” Wilson said. “We are going to a skills competition, so we are going to be assessed on our ability to throw a ball and hit a target. “We have to do that about five times, then they’ll take our average and that will be part of our scoring.”
The ball-throwing challenge will be followed by a 10-meter dribble and a shooting evaluation, with final team placements being determined by the combined score from the individual events.
“I started playing basketball a year ago,” player Harrison Downs said. “I’ve been training my new trick [of dribbling the ball] from one hand to the other hand. “I like to shoot the hoop and do my dribbling trick and scoring a point.”
Scoring is also teammate Jose Zavalza’s favorite part of basketball. “It’s a good game and a good sport,” Zavalza, who has been playing basketball for the last decade, added.
“Everybody on the Red Rockers team is really nice and responsible and it encourages me more to play with these guys,” Aldo Lara-Ayala said. “Just spending time with these guys has been my favorite memory.”
The roster also includes several new faces, such as Chase Jones. “[I started] not too long ago, just a couple of days,” Jones said while showing off his artistic side as well with a plushie character he created named Gatorhead. “I made him five years ago.”
Wilson said that people can support the team by purchasing the “Red Rockers’ Cookbook” by contacting her at twilson@sedonak12.org. The book, which came out in 2021, is priced at $25 and has raised about $3,000 for the team.
“[Pfaff] made me very proud of her,” Wilson said. “Because when COVID hit, she reached out to me and said, ‘Miss Tiffany, I’ve never been part of your Special Olympics team. But I would love to go and be someone who’s kind of in charge of your fundraising,’ and she came up with this idea of us doing a cookbook … [Pfaff] wants to really give back to her community. She’s always wanted to go and help others around her … and she’s making sure that others are feeling comfortable and accepted.”
The Red Rockers players will be hosting their annual track and field meet for the Mountain Area Special Olympics on Saturday, April 6, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Player Roster
- Nikayla Caruso
- Belle Gray
- Chase Jones
- Sofia Jurado
- Dayanna Landaverde
- Aldo Lara-Ayala
- Tai Scharnhorst
- Eimi Vergara
- Marlee Zapata
- Jose Zavalza
- Cristofer Zeno
- Leo Beltran
- Solomon Carroll
- Harrison Downs
- Ricky Landa
