Cheers, Dunks and High-fives: an afternoon at the Unified Basketball Jamboree

Unified Jamboree, March 31 2026

“I love having fun with my friends,” says Enzo Perri. “I started doing this so I could chill with my boy Charlie.” (c) Burt Granofsky/Newton Beacon

Seventh-grader Enzo Perri loves being on the F.A. Day middle school unified basketball team. The games are great. The practices might be even better.

“Practice is awesome,” he says. “We have so much fun. At the last practice, we got to use pool noodles.”

Perri is relatively new to basketball, and only recently started shooting hoops with his twin brother, who plays in local club leagues. Basketball didn’t hold his interest at first.

But this winter, he has fallen in love with it because he has found a team where he can compete with a lot of his friends.

“I love having fun with my friends,” continues Perri. “I started doing this so I could chill with my boy Charlie.”

Perri was one of nearly 80 middle school athletes from Newton who participated in Day’s unified basketball jamboree on Tuesday afternoon. For a raucous 90 minutes, players competed in a friendly basketball battle in front of cheering parents, siblings, teachers and friends.

In unified basketball, students with intellectual disabilities (known as “athletes”) play alongside their peers who are in regular education programs (known as “partners”). Partners facilitate the game by helping athletes move the ball up the floor, pass to their teammates, and shoot the ball. The sport is much more cooperative than a traditional game of middle school basketball; while points are recorded, many basketball rules (like traveling and three-second violations) are not enforced.

The game is also peppered with moments of individual expression and achievement. During the first game of the jamboree, Brown’s Evan Friedberg passed the ball through his legs, then spun it on the ground before launching his shot, eliciting oohs and ahhs from the crowd.

Later in the game, the Day bench celebrated as Day’s Ezra Rosenblum dunked the ball on a secondary basket that hung below the regular 10-foot hoop.

Bridget Grant started Oak Hill’s unified basketball team five years ago. Grant teaches in a sub-separate classroom, and she wanted to provide more extracurricular opportunities for her students who have autism as well as intellectual disabilities.

“A lot of our students were not accessing the typical basketball team or the soccer team,” she says. Starting a unified team was an attempt to create “more of an opportunity for them to compete and make some connections with peers that do have disabilities, and peers without.”

Since the team started playing, she has seen a real change in her students. On the court, athletes demonstrate increased confidence and leadership skills. Off the court, Grant has seen partners and athletes develop friendships, sitting with each other at lunch time and playing together in gym class.

“We’ve had students who didn’t really have friendships before they came to Oak Hill, and now they are going to each others’ birthday parties,” she says. “So it’s not just the basketball. It’s more the social connection, the teamwork, the confidence.”

Jim O’Donnell, Day’s head coach, started his school’s unified program in 2020 after learning about the Special Olympics unified model. In the years since, he has seen benefits for all players.

“A ‘neurotypical’ partner may help an athlete with a disability get acclimated to the game and understand the rules,” he says, “but when those athletes suggest silly stretches and teach the whole team how to dance on the sidelines, they pull shyer student partners out of their shells, too. That gradual blurring of definitions and roles of ‘who helps who’ is student-led and my favorite part of the season.”

One of the parents watching from the sidelines was Tony Clark, whose son Cassius was suited up for Oak Hill. While Clark wished the game was a bit more structured—“the kids get away with a little much,” he laughs—he says that Cassius enjoys the camaraderie and community that the program offers. And, like all kids, he just enjoys being on a team. Before each game, he bugs his dad to make sure his jersey is clean and ready to go.

“The opportunity to feel like, ‘I’m on a team,’ that’s a big deal,” says Clark. “To be on a team, to have a jersey, to participate.”

After two games, many baskets, and a lot of cheering, the final buzzer sounds and the players line up for handshakes and team photos. Athletes receive balloons and red ribbons to mark their participation in the event. It’s the end of the jamboree, and the end of the unified basketball season.

As the gym slowly empties out, O’Donnell chats with parents, high-fives his players, and checks to make sure everyone has a ride home. A smile is plastered on his face the entire time.

“I love looking over and seeing the parents of some of my kids who maybe haven’t represented their school before, or maybe haven’t been on a team before,” he says.

“And here they are out here with 200 people cheering them on. What’s better than that?”

PHOTOS

A partner guides an athlete up the floor during a game of unified basketball on March 31, 2026. (c) Burt Granofsky/Newton Beacon

Players from Brown, Oak Hill, and Day middle schools assemble before the Unified Basketball Jamboree at Day Middle School on March 31, 2026. (c) Burt Granofsky/Newton Beacon

Evan Friedberg dribbles the ball up the court. In addition to playing for the Brown unified team, he also plays with Athletes Unlimited. (c) Burt Granofsky/Newton Beacon

Lindsay Macauley watches her son Evan play. “Evan loves basketball,” she says. “And he loves all of his friends both at Brown and across the district, so it’s a great, wonderful, inclusive opportunity for him to be with his friends.” (c) Burt Granofsky/Newton Beacon