They’ve Been There. They Want to Change It.

Sam Windross has been at starting gates on snowy mountains in Ontario, booted up and tensed, ready for his skiing run to begin, and knowing he has almost no chance of winning gold.

“I'm always in the top group, but I'm always at the bottom of the group,” Windross says. “I'm too fast to be in the second group. So, it's always like, tough. I’m too fast, but I’m also not fast enough.”

That’s a familiar and sometimes frustrating aspect of life as a Special Olympics athlete that Sam wants to do something about. He’s one of 11 Athlete Leaders from Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States who are developing and leading community projects to solve challenges of daily life for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

This multi-national group of Special Olympics athlete leaders all attended the Special Olympics North America Regional Athlete Congress in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in March 2026. Fifteen of their fellow athlete leaders were there to compete to be selected by their peers to represent SONA at the 2027 Global Athlete Congress in faraway Santiago, Chile.

But these leaders were on a different mission, one that would improve Special Olympics or their communities. To do that, they learned to plan projects and develop timelines. They found out how to diagnose project problems and propose ways to address them. They learned how to work with resources, tasks, schedules, permissions, facilitation, and cooperation.

They embarked on these projects with something only Special Olympics athletes could add: deep understanding of the challenges athletes with IDD encounter over weeks, months and years. Their lived experience gives these newly trained athlete project managers valuable insights into what matters.

For Ontario skier Windross, that means researching and developing a way to explain how Special Olympics rules guide development of competition divisions, and he wants to do it in a way that eases confusion athletes may feel about who they are competing against.

In Michigan, Taylor Stevenson has been at a basketball court or at the site of a track meet, ready to compete, when plans suddenly changed. In those moments, some people knew where to go and some didn’t, and that showed her that communication in those situations is essential. For her project, she is developing a system for her Special Olympics Michigan Area 27 coaches to instantly share crucial updates using social media, phone calls, texting and calendars, and just as importantly, she plans to train athletes how to use the system.

Shared experiences revealed through conversations were important to Anita Griffin of Special Olympics Massachusetts. She grew up in a small town far from most Special Olympics activities. Getting to practice or competitions meant a lot of driving. She wants to find ways to reach people with and without intellectual disabilities in their communities by connecting with schools and presenting sport opportunities closer to them more often.

"As athletes, we're not alone in our situations, in our own states,” Griffin says. “There's other athletes around the U.S. and other countries that are also dealing with the same things that we are dealing with. It has been super to understand that we're not the only ones."

Many athlete leaders at the Congress also shared their belief in the importance of athlete voice, the insights and direction that come from athletes themselves. Some projects could take the power of athlete voices to new places.

Athlete leader Karen Kerr’s project focuses on preparing athletes to speak directly to state legislators at Special Olympics Indiana’s next State House Day. “I am so impressed with our athletes and their projects,” says Kelly Sheehy, Director, Regional Operations and Project Management for Special Olympics North America. “I am personally passionate about Karen’s project. That is going to empower athletes to become educated and trained to advocate at the state level with elected officials.”

“State House Day is important because it lets individuals with disabilities show their state officials that people with disabilities have a voice and their voices need to be heard,” Kerr says. Legislators need to “know what they need to change, what could be done differently, and how they can help.”

In the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, Athlete leader Drexel Joseph has heard people say Special Olympics athletes are only about sport. He is planning to change that impression.

“Athletes want their story to be told. It's time for us as athletes to spread our voices, spread inclusion by us, for us,” Joseph says. He’s developing a project to teach video production skills to Special Olympics athletes and to establish a network that features athletes all the time. He’ll start on YouTube. He wants to take it all the way to television.

“With my project, I plan to branch out into the communities, into the schools, the entire nation,” Joseph says. “But it starts little by little, step by step.”

Athlete leaders developing and implementing these projects will combine their insider knowledge with the empowerment of leadership. For Augie Lara of Special Olympics Colorado, inside knowledge has a special twist.

“Let me tell you, some days I feel like I'm old. My bones are cracking and popping,” Lara says. “A lot of us athletes, when we hit a certain age, sometimes we may or may not play as much sports as we used to when we were a lot younger.”

Lara’s project is to develop new roles for older Special Olympics athletes as educators and recruiters as an alternative to playing sports.

“I realized that a lot of us athletes are inspired by athletes who are in their master age, their 50s and 60s, and I feel like we learn a lot from them by their experience.”

The athlete leaders driving these projects all had direct support from leaders at the highest level of the Special Olympics North America Region during the Congress in Michigan. In information sessions over two days at the Congress, members of the SONA Region Senior Leadership Team shared background about fundraising, health programming, divisioning, marketing, resources and other programming.

The senior leaders also sat with athlete leaders one on one to discuss their projects.

“These athletes are knowledgeable and passionate about competition and Special Olympics,” says Gary Cimaglia, Vice President of Sports for Special Olympics North America. “Not only about training hard, competing hard, but ensuring that everything is fair, equitable, and the rules are followed. And that's what Special Olympics is all about.”

Sam Windross met with Cimaglia one on one to discuss his project about divisioning education, and he spoke to his fellow delegates, too. “I learned a lot,” Sam says. The challenge of understanding divisioning “is actually bigger than I thought. … I had someone from a different country walk up to me and say, ‘I'm glad you're doing this, because when I asked, they just gave me a 20-page book.’”