Changing the Game | Building the Whole Person | From the Sidelines to the Front Office | From Eligibility to Excellence | Telling Their Story
The Campus as Community: Partnerships, Inclusion, and Athletics as a Bridge
Athletic events have long served as gathering points for campus communities. But the most innovative departments today are asking a bigger question: how can athletics extend beyond the campus to strengthen the communities that surround it, and how can the values of sport—teamwork, belonging, inclusion, and shared purpose—be made available to people who have traditionally been left outside the arena? Three of this year’s honorees have built programs that answer that question in distinctive and moving ways.
Clovis Community College in Clovis, California, began its relationship with Jami Hamel de la Cerda and the Diamond Learning Center (DLC)—an educational institution for adult learners with intellectual and physical disabilities—in 2022, when Jami made a $200,000 gift to support Clovis’ Crush student-athletes. It was the largest single gift in the college’s history and to athletics in the 100-plus-year history of its four-college district. What followed, however, was not simply a donor relationship, but the discovery of a shared mission. Both organizations serve students who have been told, implicitly or explicitly, that higher education was not for them. Both believe that learning is a lifelong endeavor and that community changes what people believe is possible for themselves.
Crush athletes began visiting the DLC campus to sign autographs, play games, and take part in what have become legendary dance parties. DLC students began packing the bleachers at Clovis athletic events in bright neon green shirts, cheering on athletes they came to know as friends.
Jami’s generosity continued in 2024 with an additional $300,000 gift for a new on-campus sports complex named the ISE Diamond L.I.F.E. Sports Complex, representing a forever reminder of their shared mission that Learning Is For Everyone. The complex, scheduled to open in Spring 2027, will include a soccer field, all-weather track, field house, scoreboard, and press box—amenities that Clovis student-athletes have never before had access to. Since the partnership began, the number of athletes with a 3.2 GPA or higher has grown from 42 to 99, a 136% increase, and the college has produced more conference championships and All-Americans in the four years since Jami’s initial gift than in its entire history combined.
One hundred miles north, a different kind of community partnership has been taking shape. Joliet Junior College (JJC) in Joliet, Illinois, formalized its relationship with the Greater Joliet Area YMCA in February 2025, though the connection had been building for years. Together, the two organizations have built a set of programs that use JJC’s athletic facilities and the YMCA’s youth development expertise to build something neither could have created alone.
The YMCA Junior Wolves NFL Flag Football League—supported by the Chicago Bears—was developed and hosted at JJC’s campus, joined by a Youth Basketball League and a cheer and dance program running through winter and summer months. In the most recent year, the partnership hosted 300 youth participants, more than 20 volunteer coaches, and over 135 individual games and practices. JJC athletes visit area schools through the Paws on the Street program, mentoring younger students and building the leadership skills that come from being a role model.
The YMCA Teen REACH summer day camp, hosted at JJC’s facilities, drew more than 100 campers per day in 2026—many having their first experience on a college campus. Three community workshops—Jobs in the Trades, Jobs in Healthcare, and Finding Free Money for College—brought more than 265 attendees to campus. The partnership reflects a conviction that JJC’s campus is not a destination but a resource, and that athletics can be a vehicle for making higher education feel familiar, welcoming, and within reach.
What inclusion looks like in practice—as a lived experience—is visible in Massachusetts Bay Community College’s Unified Sports program. MassBay became the first community college in the state to establish a Unified Sports program operating under the Special Olympics umbrella when it launched in 2022. What began with a handful of students meeting informally to play and exercise in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic has grown into a program serving 12 to 15 students who practice basketball twice a week and compete in the Special Olympics Yawkey Basketball League. In its first competitive season, the team captured a silver medal. The program has since expanded into outdoor track and field through Special Olympics events.
For the students at the center of the program, Unified Sports provides confidence, teamwork, physical fitness, leadership, and something genuinely difficult to quantify: the experience of being an athlete, of representing a college in competition, and of belonging to a team that shows up for them. Students without intellectual disabilities participate as teammates and partners alongside their peers—demonstrating that differences do not have to be barriers to participation. Faculty and staff have embraced the program as their own, with large groups traveling to games and creating an extraordinary sense of school spirit around a team that demonstrates, concretely, what the institution stands for.
MassBay has recently added a second coach to support the program’s continued growth—an institutional investment that signals this is not a one-time experiment but an ongoing commitment.
