EPHS earns prestigious National Unified Championship School nod

Townies are recognized for commitment to inclusion by Special Olympics for offering volleyball, hoops programs

By Mike Rego
Posted 5/5/22

EAST PROVIDENCE — Before of raucous crowd of fellow students, members of the East Providence High School Unified Basketball League team, administrators and elected officials recently unveiled a …

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EPHS earns prestigious National Unified Championship School nod

Townies are recognized for commitment to inclusion by Special Olympics for offering volleyball, hoops programs

Posted

EAST PROVIDENCE — Before of raucous crowd of fellow students, members of the East Providence High School Unified Basketball League team, administrators and elected officials recently unveiled a banner signifying EPHS’s recognition with the prestigious honor of becoming a “National Unified Championship School.”

EPHS was formally recognized with the accolade by the national Special Olympics in honor of the successes of its unified basketball and volleyball programs.

The 2021-22 term is the seventh during which the Townies have competed in both sports.

The unified programs, basketball offered in the spring and volleyball in the fall, are co-sanctioned by the Rhode Island Interscholastic League and Special Olympics Rhode Island. The endeavors bring student-athletes with special needs together with their counterparts from the general population.

“Inclusion is such an important part of all of our programming at East Providence High School and Unified Sports exemplifies that commitment to inclusion,” said district athletic director Gregg Amore, who has overseen the EPHS programs since their inception in the fall of 2016 and who is also a former long-time Social Studies/History teacher at the high school.

“It is a tremendous honor for our school to be recognized as a National Unified Champions School, one of only four Rhode Island high schools to earn that distinction. Unified Sports is the very best of what we do in education and athletics,” he added.

Kristen Coutoulakis, a physical education teacher in the district, is the co-head coach of basketball team with Dana Brodin, a Pediatric Occupational Therapist in the system. Brodin, in turn, is head coach of the volleyball squad in the fall. She’s assisted during that season by Bruce Zarembka, a paraprofessional at EPHS.

— East Providence Post and eastbayri.com staff photographer Rich Dionne shot the accompanying gallery of photos.

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A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.