- Special Olympians from seven countries designed T-shirts for display and future online sale Wednesday.
- The athletes worked in teams alongside graphic designers and special celebrity designers.
- Amy Wise, senior vice president of global marketing for Special Olympics International, said the event was the first of many that will be hosted globally.
SANDY — Sixteen Special Olympians, representing seven different countries, got to take part in the first-ever event aimed at getting them to help inspire and design T-shirts that will soon be sold online.
"It feels amazing to be part of this event," Anita Forde, a basketball player from Ireland, said. "It's just been amazing, the fact that we've come together as a community, and we actually come together to inspire others to say, 'If I can do it, they can do it too.'"
The athletes worked in teams alongside graphic designers and special celebrity designers. Among those was reality star, model and influencer Heidi D'Amelio.
"My heart is full, and I'm just so fortunate to be a part of this," D'Amelio said. "I started volunteering with Special Olympics when I was in seventh grade, and it changed my life then, the way that I felt."
Kyle Karren, a flag football, soccer and pickleball player otherwise known as "Pickles," worked with D'Amelio, but knew exactly what he wanted before the process began.
"The lower arm and the upper arm grabbing each other and grasping each other, saying that you're not alone," Pickles said, describing his design with the word 'RISE' above the print. "It's important to me because in Special Olympics, whenever somebody's down, there's always a group of athletes surrounding that one person that's feeling down. They pick them up."
Pickles's design, along with more than a dozen others, will be up on display at the Special Olympics and will be available for sale on T-shirts.
Amy Wise, senior vice president of global marketing for Special Olympics International, said the Athlete Design Co_Lab event was the first of what will be many to be hosted in cities around the world.
"This is absolutely about showing our athletes who they are telling their stories through, through their lens," Wise explained. "We believe they have the greatest stories to tell. They have talents to offer the world."
Other T-shirt designs at the event centered around themes of strength, bravery and inclusion. Several people noted the importance of that last theme.
"It's everything to me, and it has been my whole entire life since I started Special Olympics," Morgan Hudson, a basketball player from Utah said. "Everyone is just included. It all is just like one effort. Everyone is in it, and we all work together."
