Unified tennis tournament encourages districtwide community, camaraderie

Thumps and thwacks of tennis balls against rackets echoed through Baker Park on Monday, consistently interrupted by the cheering and laughing of a close-knit community.

Around 175 students, coaches and spectators gathered at the Baker Park tennis courts on Fleming Avenue for the Frederick County Public Schools 2025 Unified Tennis Tournament.

In unified sports, students living with disabilities are teammates with other students. The program was created and is run by Special Olympics.

In unified tennis, students play doubles.

FCPS’ 10 high schools were represented at the tournament on Monday. The different schools were dressed in their respective colors and huddled up to give each other final words of encouragement before play began.

The teams are split into two divisions without real differences — the U.S. Open and the French Open.

Gov. Thomas Johnson High School won gold and Frederick High School won silver for the U.S. Open. For the French Open, Gov. Thomas Johnson High School won gold and Catoctin High School won silver.

Some schools had two teams compete since there is a maximum of 10 players on each team. There is a minimum of six players per team.

All four teams will compete in the 2025 Interscholastic Unified Sports Tennis State Tournament on Nov. 11.

As emcee of the event, Kevin Kendro, the supervisor of athletics and extracurricular activities for FCPS, introduced each school, whose team members cheered in turn.

Brunswick High’s Aryan Chakravarty sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After his microphone cut out, all of the other students and coaches joined in to finish the anthem.

Kendro said in an interview that the county unified tennis tournament has been held more than 10 times.

He said FCPS was part of the statewide pilot program for unified sports the spring before school systems were legally obligated to have an athletic program for students with disabilities.

“It gives an opportunity for our students with disabilities to compete, but also our students without disabilities,” he said. “It is maybe one of the best things that we’ve ever done here in Frederick County.”

Kendro said unified sports help grow friendships and smiles. It teaches students life skills and how to compete — “a lot of the things that carry over from all of our other sports,” he said.

Ainsley Fink, a junior at Brunswick High School, said in an interview that unified sports in FCPS feel like a community.

“When we came here, there were students from the other teams coming over here to say hi and hugging us and everything,” she said.

As a first-time unified athlete, Fink said, and as someone who gets anxious before joining a new sport, she would recommend that interested students “absolutely do it.”

She said being the best at the sport is “not what this is about at all. It also gets your foot in the door trying out different activities and meeting new people.”

Jack Capps, a ninth grader at Brunswick and Fink’s teammate, said it was his first year on the unified tennis team.

“It’s like the first sport I really like to play,” he said.

Capps said his favorite part of playing unified tennis was getting to be on the court with his friends.

“You get to meet all different kinds of people,” he said.

Greta Harrison, a tennis and bocce coach for Special Olympics Frederick County and the director of specialized programs at Gov. Thomas Johnson High School, explained that students play tennis at their own speed.

Harrison said there are different colored tennis balls that are not as compressed as a standard issue, which means they are “slightly bigger … and a little bit slower to help them get to the ball.”

“It is absolutely one of the best things that ever hit Frederick County,” she said of unified sports.

When they were not on the court, teammates sprawled across picnic blankets or sat leisurely in lawn chairs as parents and coaches helped the next players get ready for their turn.

Urbana High School ninth grader Julianna Chisholm, a first-year unified sports athlete, said her favorite part of playing tennis was “hitting the ball.”

Chisholm agreed that she made a lot of friends in the program, and that she met up with friends from other schools at the tournament.

Michele Chisholm, Julianna’s mom, said Julianna practices tennis twice a week and loves it.

“She gets to socialize with everyone,” Michele said. “That’s the biggest part.”

Mark Angleberger, a physical education teacher at Tuscarora and the unified bocce and tennis coach at the school, said he was working for the school district when FCPS implemented the unified teams 15 years ago.

“Going from teams of five or six, and now we have, in some schools, our bocce and track, they get 35 or 40 kids out there,” he said. “It’s really cool to see the school support from all of our helpers and to see these kids strike up friendships.”

Angleberger said the program grows community and camaraderie.

“The kids not just having something to look forward to after school, but knowing that they have people in the school they can count on,” he said.