In the sheep barn at the edge of the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center on Wednesday, Jazmine Crabb, an incoming junior at Redmond High School, prepared a sheep to show in the fair for her very first time. This was a long-awaited moment for a part of a bigger organization of high school students, who are each paired with a student with special needs.

The group of students, part of Unified Sports, is breaking the barrier between general education students and students with special needs both inside and outside their high schools.

Unified Sports is a program under the umbrella of the Special Olympics, a sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, and runs at Redmond High School and Ridgeview High School.

The program is a partnership between student athletes with special needs and high school student mentors without special needs, according to Amy Nickell, physical education teacher who spearheaded the Unified Sports at Redmond High School two years ago. The program will serve all abilities, Nickell said, but today has students with autism, Down syndrome and intellectual disabilities.

Athletes and partners team up together and participate in activities such as soccer, basketball, track and field and kickball throughout the year, according to Nickell.

This is the first year Redmond High School participated in FFA to show sheep, Nickell said. There was a team of three to each sheep: the owner, athlete and partner.

“(We’re) trying to expand more than just the sports side of it and look into some other opportunities, because not everybody is attracted to the sports,” Nickell said. “We’re going to begin adding our kids into the FFA classes, and they have different branches of them.”

Nickell said Redmond High School’s Unified FFA is still in the beginning stages, and officials are trying to find more creative spaces for the student body to have more inclusive programs.

“The more opportunities we give our students with special needs, the more chance there is that they decide they love it and they pursue it,” Nickell said.

Before Redmond High School, Jazmine Crabb, 16, didn’t have an outlet for activities, according to her father, Spencer Crabb.

“The opportunities for Jazmine and in the last two years have just been, been great,” Spencer Crabb said.

Jazmine Crabb loves animals and said she is great at calming the sheep, Donna, down by looking in the sheep’s eyes. Spencer Crabb hopes for more activities for individuals with special needs to get integrated in the student body and community.

“I’m excited to see how Jazz (Jazmine) has so much fun, and maybe she wants to do it again next year,” said Tatum Aeschliman, an incoming junior at Redmond High School and Jazmine Crabb’s Unified Sports partner.

“(Unified has) changed the culture of Redmond High, that inclusion is a real deal that matters,” Angela Capps said. “We’ve got our special needs kids coming to dances. Two of them were on the homecoming court last year, and this was our students. This was not teachers pushing for this. It is our students.”

Brynn Capps, recent Redmond High School graduate, has been participating in FFA for the past five years and has been a partner with Unified for the past two years.

Brynn Capps said that before the Unified program started at Redmond High School, there was a divide between the general education students and students with special needs. Their classroom was at the very back of the school and they weren’t integrated with the other students.

“Nobody saw them or knew who these kids were, right?” Brynn Capps said. “It’s brought more awareness to just how, like, these athletes are not ‘not normal’ kids. They’re just, they’re friends too.”

Now, their classroom is in the middle of the school, and there is camaraderie between all the students every day, Brynn Capps said.

Brynn Capps and Angela Capps, Redmond High School health, physical education and Unified sports teacher and Brynn Capps’s mother, both helped start the Unified FFA program this year.

“This last spring, (we) really started to get serious about, let’s make a plan, and then let’s set a time and let’s do this,” Angela Capps said.

Unified FFA held one practice the week before the fair started and was ready to go Wednesday.

As they showed their animals around the ring, athletes and partners held hands as athletes held the sheeps’ halters close to their bodies and partners set their legs to show them to the crowd.

Angela Capps’ favorite part about the Unified FFA is seeing the joy from athletes and their partners.

“You’ll see the bonding that has taken place over the past couple years,” Angela Capps said. “It’s true friendships in the hallways at school.”

In the future, Angela Capps hopes Unified FFA grows and that other schools get involved, too.

“I hope that, you know, other schools see this, and maybe a kid has never set eyes on a lamb before, or maybe they start including goats,” Angela Capps said. “I hope it just continues to grow.”

Jazmine Crabb hopes to participate again in next year’s Deschutes County Fair with Unified FFA.

“Just seeing her participate is great,” Spencer Crabb said. “It was awesome to see.”

Editor’s note: This article has been corrrected. The original version misspelled Brynn and Angela Capps’ last name. The Bulletin regrets the error.