After a month of overcast skies, even the weather was generous on Sunday, the final day of competition. <\/span>There\u2019s a lot of big events on Saturday, but Sunday is all about the athletes competing and interacting. <\/span>The big names that are still around mostly do their volunteer work quietly (like Misty May-Treanor handing out medals in the Pyramid, or Marc Spitz and son volunteering at the Aquatics center), so the athletes themselves get plenty of attention.<\/p>\n And deservedly so\u2014only at a Special Olympics basketball tournament do you: see players regularly cherry-picking on defense, but never on offense; see an injured player leave the court to applause not just from the crowd and his teammates, but from every player on all four courts as well; see a team that just lost the first-place game join in the raucous celebration of the winners; see handshakes and smiles after every on-court blow-up or disagreement. <\/span>It could sound clich\u00e9, but truly, professional athletes could take a lot of cues from these competitors, for whom the very act of competing is compensation enough.<\/p>\n As Special Olympics Southern California President Bill Shumard put it during the closing ceremonies, \u201cThe color of your medal or ribbon signifies how that event <\/em>went\u2014but you are all winners.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, what Shumard, and everyone else who\u2019s spent time around these athletes knows, is that their heightened appreciation for the value of competition doesn\u2019t make them less competitive. <\/span>A lot of the athletes competing put in serious time training or practicing their sport, and when they take the field, they\u2019re dedicated and focused. <\/span>I\u2019ve watched more than my share of sports over the last year, and I can assure you it\u2019s a mix of competitiveness and sportsmanship you won\u2019t find anywhere else.<\/p>\n Jenna Barnes, who won Most Inspirational Athlete this year, typifies that attitude. <\/span>Barnes just graduated from middle school, and will attend Golden Valley High School next year, where she\u2019ll compete on the swim team. <\/span>On Saturday and Sunday, she swam for the cycle, competing in four events and winning a first, second, and third place medal as well as a fourth-place ribbon. <\/span>They aren\u2019t the only awards she\u2019s taken home this month, as she also got an award for fitness from her middle school, along with three academic awards.<\/p>\n \u201cWe appreciate,\u201d said SOSC founder Rafer Johnson, \u201cNot just what she did here, but in the 364 days before.\u201d<\/p>\n Barnes and the other athletes represent, and represent well, the wonderful Oath of the Special Olympics Athlete: \u201cLet me win. <\/span>But if I cannot win, let me brave in the attempt.\u201d <\/span>Words everyone can aspire to uphold and fulfill. Over 1,100 athletes inspired and impressed at Long Beach State over the weekend in the 40th anniversary of the first SoCal Summer Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3680"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3680"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/i304.photobucket.com\/albums\/nn191\/LBPOSTphotos\/IMG_2329.jpg\")
<\/span>
After the Closing Ceremony, the remaining athletes and families joined hands and listened to a fellow athlete sing “What A Wonderful World.”<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"