SOMO News

All of the volunteers below were recognized for their outstanding contributions to Special Olympics Missouri from their respective areas at the SOMO Annual Awards Luncheon Jan. 17 in Branson. Each year, Special Olympics Missouri salutes those who have made significant contributions to the Special Olympics movement. Each area nominee is submitted for statewide recognition, and the overall winners were also announced at the SOMO Leadership Conference.

Randy Boehm — Headquarters nominee
Randy Boehm has proven himself as an invaluable leader within the LETR program. He presently serves on the LETR Committee, having chaired it for 10 years. He is a torch runner turned region coordinator, where he served for 10 years. Then he stepped into the committee chair role and during the next 10 years it went from a good LETR program to an excellent LETR program. During this same time, Randy also became a part of the SOMO Board of Directors. He served the organization starting in 2006 and influenced decisions and governed. Two of these years he was both Board Chair as well as the LETR Chair. He always kept the needs and impact of SOMO’s athletes in mind. He was the Strategic Planning Council Chair for 2009 – 2010 and the Vice Chair for 2009 – 2010. He served as the Chairman of the Board in 2011 and 2012. Randy also led the LETR movement to join in support of the Training for Life Campus Capital Campaign by championing a commitment of $1 million over five years to support this new training facility. He also served from November 2008 to November 2013 as the regional coordinator of the International LETR Executive Council. In this role, he served as the liaison to five other states with communication and collaboration a focus. This region was always a leader in fundraising results compared to other regions.

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Linda Tyler — St. Louis Metro Area
Linda Tyler started her SOMO experience as a coach for Wentzville Special Sports and fell in love with the program and our athletes. Even while completing graduate-level classes in 2014, she attends so many events as a volunteer within the St. Louis Metro Area and statewide. After learning the rules of sports such as bowling and basketball, Linda is always the first to offer her help as an event manager at local and area events. She will travel on her own dollar to state games and volunteer multiple days in a row, always serving as a smiling face to athletes and a helping hand to staff. After being selected as a Unified Partner in bocce for the 2014 USA Games, Linda agreed to take on a major fundraiser to benefit the coaches and athletes from the St. Louis area traveling to this event. With limited assistance, Linda coordinated multiple concession stands at this year’s regional basketball tournament, purchasing the supplies, creating the menu and finding the volunteers to help.

Charlie Aiken — Southwest Area
Charlie Aiken is one of those volunteers you can really count on. He will drop anything to help SOMO. He is friendly and kind-hearted. Whenever help is needed, he volunteers his time without hesitation. Charlie has many helpful contacts and resources to offer SOMO that he doesn’t mind reaching out to. He always works hard to get the job done and does a good job at it. Every year for Area Spring Games, Charlie donates his time and trailer to help us load and haul all the equipment we need for the games. He helps organize and implement fundraisers such as the Unified bocce tournament. Charlie will even stand out in the blazing heat to cook hundreds of hamburgers and hotdogs all while keeping a smile on his face and cracking jokes.

Jen Rose — Southeast Area
Jen Rose is about as consistent of a volunteer as they come. She helped coordinate volunteers and was a venue coordinator at area basketball, district basketball and Area Spring Games in both Poplar Bluff and Cape Girardeau. She served on the Polar Plunge committee and was a key part of its success. Jen attended and helped with State Basketball Championships in the Kansas City area. Previously, for four years she served on the Games Management Team for the State Fall Games in Cape Girardeau, where she was in charge of volunteers as well as helping with every aspect of the games. On late notice, Jen agreed to help with the area bowling tournament in Cape in the fall and stepped up in the fundraising category to have Southeast Area Special Olympics be the benefactor from one of the Cape Girardeau Roller Girls Bouts in Cape. Jen is employed by Southeast Missouri State University and has made a commitment to help Special Olympics Missouri as often as she can. She held up this commitment for many years, this year being no exception. Jen has sacrificed a lot of personal time and work time on some occasions to do this. She gives to the organization because of pure desire and choice. Volunteers like this are hard to find!

Amanda Geno — KC Metro Area
Amanda Geno is one of those volunteers that the KC Metro Area staff knows it can turn to in a pinch, no matter if it is on the program or development side. She is active in all areas of the program. Amanda serves on the area GMT for all sports and when there are regional GMTs in the Kansas City area, she is the first to step up and help. She is a Unified Partner and recently attended USA Games as a Unified Partner in bowling. Amanda has also been a great mentor/role model for many of our athletes. She takes time out of her day to be there and help them or even just listen when they need a friend. Amanda serves as the Torch Run coordinator for her law enforcement agency. She was very involved in LETR prior to her becoming her agency coordinator. She sold T-shirts, participated in the annual Torch Run, served at many Tip-A-Cop events and has attended many annual LETR International Conferences representing her agency. Amanda was the driving force behind creating a citywide Torch Run route for Kansas City. Amanda has been on the Polar Plunge committee since joining the Lee’s Summit Police Department. In 2014, the event chair stepped down after eight years. The Plunge committee asked many people to step up and chair this amazing committee but no one was willing to make the time commitment. Amanda was already involved in all aspects of SOMO, but she saw a need and stepped up to chair the Polar Plunge committee.

Missy Ash — Central Area
Missy Ash is the center of the Hermann program! She sends out letters to all the participating schools, raises the funds through local company and civic organization donations, ensures that each athlete competing has a commemorative T-shirt to wear for the day in various colors (by the schools) and helps recruit volunteers.
Through her vision, this event has grown to this year host 134 athletes, 50 Young Athletes and 100 volunteers. Through Missy’s contact, she was able to secure the local Mason Lodge which not only donates all the food for the team lunches, but also gives back money and runs the concession stand. In six years, Missy was able to grow this event from three schools in 2007 to 11 schools in 2014. One of the most touching things that this event has done is that it has brought the idea to other communities. A teacher who was involved in the early years at Hermann with Missy moved to another school district and last year that school district became involved.

Lynett Bingaman — North Area
Lynett is involved in several aspects of the North Area program. She has served on the Plunge Committee for the past four years, she is the official money counter of the Plunge, she recruited several new volunteers to help with the Plunge registration process, she has served as a volunteer at the many of our program events and she partnered with us in the Duck Race for three years. Lynett is a whirlwind of new ideas, always researching new fundraising events, matching grants and grants in general that SOMO can apply for. If she hears about an opportunity for a non-profit, she calls and informs staff as well. Lynett works full time for another non-profit organization, but she will share her resources, knowledge, time and talent to help Special Olympics and the athletes. She wears her heart on her sleeve and always has the best intentions for our athletes.