SOMO News
2015 World Games: Day 2 — Missouri 3-0 on the day
This is the second blog post (find others on our blog homepage!) in a series from Special Olympics Missouri Public Relations Manager Brandon Schatsiek who is in Los Angeles covering the 13 Missouri athletes competing for Special Olympics USA at the 2015 World Games.
It’s pretty hard to find a place that has perfect weather, but Los Angeles has to come pretty close. Although it was pretty warm today, there was an almost constant breeze that helped keep things mostly cool.
Enough about the weather and onto the more important things… how’d our Missouri boys do on Sunday in competition? Well, they went a combined 3-0!
Bobby Williams played two divisioning matches today and beat an athlete from Paraguay 10-8 and later beat an athlete from Israel. Sadly, we weren’t able to get over to watch Bobby play today, but we’ll make sure to get there on Tuesday. The two matches were pretty even and if Bobby were even slightly nervous, he didn’t really show it as he was never behind in either of his matches. His game times for Monday, July 27 are still up in the air and we will update the webpage with the times and post to social media (Facebook & Twitter) as soon as we get the word.
Jason Parrish high-fives his teammates after he scored a run vs. Australia
Coach Shaffer does her best to keep the guys loose during the game
While we were unable to get to Bobby’s matches this morning, the late start for the softball team gave us plenty of time to catch their game vs. Australia. The first inning was a little shaky for the guys (chalk it up to nerves in front of a decent-sized crowd and the first game of the tournament), but they came out of that rough first inning (both at the plate and in the field) with a 4-3 lead. Then that’s when they really came out of their shells. They started to be a lot more patient at the plate and it paid off with two walks and a MAMMOTH LASER homerun from Jason Parrish in the second plating four more runs and two walks and six runs in the third inning before the game was called for the one-hour time limit.
Three of the guys were lucky enough to be selected to participate in the Unified Sports exhibition with other world-class athletes and celebrities following their game. Allen Tobin, Arthur Murphy and Tyler Scott all took part in the exhibition while their teammates and fans filled the bleachers behind them cheering them on.
Arthur Murphy receives congratulations from actor Ed Harris after reaching first base during the Unified Sports exhibition
Overall, it was a great day for the Show-Me State and we’re looking forward to see what they can do tomorrow!
Sports Schedule for July 27 —
Softball: 9 a.m. vs. Canada & 3:30 p.m. vs. Mexico
Tennis (Bobby Williams): TBD
As always, more photos are available on our Flickr album or our Facebook page and you can follow along during the day with live updates from the games by following our social media accounts (Facebook & Twitter).