By: Taylor Christensen | Royal Oak Review | Published March 21, 2024
CLAWSON — Clawson middle and high school students jumped into their second year of the Polar Plunge fundraising event for Special Olympics Feb. 29.
Over 100 students and staff participated in the Polar Plunge, which raised over $10,000 for the cause. The official title for the event is the “Cool School Polar Plunge.”
Being a Special Olympics Unified Champion School, Clawson is dedicated to inclusion and acceptance for all students with and without intellectual disabilities, according to special education teacher Cait O’Meara.
“It’s a program where we are able to meaningfully include students with disabilities in school activities,” O’Meara said. “We played basketball this year, so we had a Special Olympics basketball team where the team consisted of special education students and general education students playing together.”
Each year as a part of the Special Olympics Unified Championship program, the schools are required to hold a school engagement activity to help raise money for the cause. O’Meara and her colleague, Amy Hatto, worked together to spearhead this fundraiser.
“We thought it was something that was fun and interactive for all students to get involved and do something different, rather than just sitting and listening to a guest speaker or something like that,” she said.
According to O’Meara, the Special Olympics team provided “The Plungester,” a 46-foot-long, 8-foot-wide and 10-foot-tall portable tank of 2,100 gallons of 45-degree water for participants to jump in as a part of the Cool School event.
The Plungester is brought to schools, businesses and other locations that do not have access to a larger body of water, according to the Polar Plunge website.
To help with donations, local businesses and organizations in Clawson provided sponsorship. The Clawson Fire Department, Biggby Coffee in Clawson, Old Detroit Burger Bar, and American Flag and Banner Co. were among those who donated.
The Special Olympics team chose the Cool School Polar Plunge because of its ability to bring people together, according to Unified Champion Schools Coordinator Jamie Cotter.
“The whole school can participate even if they aren’t plunging. It starts a conversation about Unified Champion Schools and what we are all about,” she said. “Students have a blast jumping into cold water and get some pretty awesome bragging rights!”
Hatto said that jumping in the water was a shock and a feeling she has never felt before.
“They count you down, and then you jump in,” she said. “You feel the ice cold water just hit you and then an arm pulling you out.”
Hatto said that there were assistants in the water with dive suits on to help the jumpers safely get out of the cold pool.
“After talking with the high school kids, they all reported the same thing — that you are kind of shocked by the temperature,” she said.
Although this is the second year of doing a polar plunge, the first year was very different, according to Hatto. The first time around, the schools did not get The Plungester; instead, they had kiddie pools and some water slides.
“We had our own version last year because we did not get our name in first,” she said. “Cait O’Meara and I did the paperwork this year in the fall to make sure that we could get on the list to get the actual Plungester.”
The kids and staff picked teams to jump in with, according to Hatto, and each wore different costumes in relation to their team names.
“Based on your team, you could pick a theme. Some people dressed up in Christmas costumes, one team was dressed as Super Mario and Luigi, so based on the team, they decided what they wanted to dress up as,” she said.
Hatto said the kids and adults had a great time jumping into freezing water, and the school is looking forward to the event next year.
“All the kids that were watching — you could tell — are interested in doing it next year,” she said. “Nobody really knew exactly what to expect, but I think we are going to have even more kids participating next year.”