This past Sunday, the Princeton chapter of Best Buddies, a non-profit organization that connects individuals with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), hosted 150 community members at their biannual Best Buddies field day on Plummer Field for an afternoon of kickball, baseball, soccer, egg tossing, and much more.
Best Buddies International “creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, inclusive living, and family support for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” according to their mission statement.
At Princeton, project leaders, including junior lacrosse player Zach Friedman and senior soccer player Kiley Hamou, meet with volunteers monthly to plan the biannual field day. Student-athletes from many of Princeton’s 37 varsity sports as well as several non-athlete volunteers staff the event.
In addition to the semesterly field day, Best Buddies at Princeton sponsors a one-to-one friendship program that pairs Princeton students with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Last year, Friedman’s buddy Christopher Ruzycki won the Best Buddies Princeton Tigers Buddy of the Year Award. Friedman and Ruzycki, along with Ruzycki’s other buddy, senior lacrosse player John Dunphy, have a standing Zoom call every Sunday to catch up on Ruzycki’s week. The trio also often attends Princeton sporting events together throughout the year.
“I’m just somebody that he can talk to that is his age and into what he’s into,” Friedman shared. “It’s super cool [to build] one-on-one relationships that these kids don’t have a lot of times … it means the world.”
The Best Buddies field day was attended by individuals already paired up with Princeton buddies as well as community members hoping to join a pairing.
“It’s a great opportunity for buddies who come that want a pairing to meet someone and start building a relationship,” Friedman shared.
Friedman and Hamou also invite local organizations that work with individuals with IDD who promote the event to their networks and send cohorts to the event. This year, they invited Special Olympics New Jersey, which has partnered with the heavyweight crew team in the past, among others.
While the program welcomes any student volunteers, the large majority of its membership comes from the men’s lacrosse team and the women’s soccer team — though the continued success and positive impact of the event might see participation grow beyond varsity athletes.
“It was started by Colin Freer ’24 and Jen Estes ’24 on the men’s lacrosse team and the women’s soccer team, and so a lot of the initial members were on those two teams,” Friedman said. “But since then, it’s really spread a lot through the athletics department, and this year, we have a lot more non-athletes as well, which has been terrific.”
Though the event’s attendance has diversified, Friedman is nonetheless thankful for the continued support and engagement of his teammates — almost all of which attended the event on Sunday.
“The fact that you are like, alright, we’re having a meeting at this time, whatever, and you don’t know how many people will show up; the fact that you’ll get 53 guys sitting there … just because they see the effort and the impact, it means the world,” Friedman said. “It makes it totally worth it when you know that those guys always have your back.”
The Best Buddies program is one of several community engagement and volunteer efforts spearheaded by Princeton student-athletes. Earlier this month, Princeton Athletics hosted their annual Princeton Varsity Club Youth Clinic, where they hosted nearly 200 local kids for an afternoon of sports and fun with 120 student-athletes.
“Our athletic department’s mission is really education through athletics. These clinics have been a fantastic way for us to live out that mission of education and really apply it firsthand,” Associate Director of Athletics/Advancement and Princeton Varsity Club Brendan Van Ackeren shared with The Daily Princetonian. “[We] allow our student-athletes to use their platform to share the power of education through athletics to the next generation.”
Diego Uribe is a head Sports editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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