Sportsmanship is nothing new for Dartmouth High School athletics, but the school’s unified basketball team lends the word a new meaning.

“When the opposing team scores here, everyone’s always cheering, it’s literally just the best,” said assistant coach and special education teacher Ashley Kocur-Pierpont. 

“These kids are going to high-five each other when they score a basket,” said head coach and special education teacher John Breault. 

That kind of energy is made possible through the dozens of volunteers and educators that assist in the school’s unified basketball program, which puts athletes from the special education program and their peer partners on the same court.

The team’s fall season came to a close Nov. 9, when it brought five other teams to Dartmouth’s home gym for the year-end Jamboree. 

“They don’t get their own state tournament, so this is … their big game, their Thanksgiving game at the end of the year,” said Caiden Demanche, whose brother plays for the team. 

“It’s like their superbowl,” Kocur-Pierpont said. “The time of the year that they get to show off all the skills they’ve been working on and they get to play multiple games against multiple schools.”

The decades-old unified sports system was created by the Special Olympics and is hosted in partnership with the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. 

For the student athletes that compete in the system, it’s something they look forward to all day, Kocur-Pierpont said. 

“This is an all day event, we’ve been talking about it all day long,” Kocur-Pierpont said. “To see the excitement throughout the entire day … and then to see it all come together and see them play their hearts out is the best feeling.”

Dartmouth ended its regular season 2-3, but head coach and special education teacher John Breault said the “kids have gotten better every week,” which is the priority. 

“To see their skills develop, and then honestly, more importantly, to see them gain some friendships,” Breault said. “That’s the best part.”

A point of pride for the Dartmouth team: Every athlete on the team has scored a basket. 

“Winning cures all: once they start playing well, they start loving everyone more which means they play better and it’s a nice awesome cycle,” Demanche said. 

Athlete Joe Adao said his favorite part of the game is defense, but he also just likes going to practice every week: “I like playing with my friends, I like [to] stretch,” he said. 

Putting on Thursday’s Jamboree was a schoolwide effort: varsity student athletes refereed, varsity coaches helped run the courts and student volunteers helped keep scores and set up the gym. The national anthem was sung by athlete Alexis Benjamin, student partner Ben Smith emceed the event, and Avery Botelho read the Special Olympics oath. 

“That’s what unified is all about, it’s bringing everybody together,” Breault said. “It’s cool that we can use basketball to do that, but being able to host something like this just shows the true impact it has on your school community.”