The National Hockey League announced Michigan State University Professor Sarah Dunkel-Jackson as a recipient of the Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award for her accessible hockey program: Hockey Challenge Camp.
Dunkel-Jackson is a faculty member who is part of the MSU Research in Autism and Developmental Disabilities Lab and the Department of Human Development and Family Studies. The accessible sports programs she leads, including the Hockey Challenge Camp and the Baseball Challenge League, are part of a research and outreach partnership with the Arc Livingston and other community partners. The $25,000 NHL award—which Dunkel-Jackson received at game two of the Stanley Cup Finals—will go to the Arc Livingston to cover adaptive equipment and protective gear for these programs.
“Winning this award for Hockey Challenge Camp is so wonderful because we get to raise awareness for accessible sports programs,” Dunkel-Jackson said. “Sports are for everyone, and we are so grateful for the opportunity to support kids with unique learning and/or medical needs who want to participate in fun things like sports and to work with their families to remove barriers.”
Hockey Challenge Camp
Hockey Challenge Camp is a free three-day camp where players with unique medical and/or learning needs participate in on-ice and off-ice programs at the local hockey rink in Livingston County. Players are assigned a hockey buddy, who might be a travel hockey player, high school hockey player or an MSU student. Hockey buddies receive orientation and debriefing sessions to discuss disability-related topics and ideas on how best to support the players. Players and their hockey buddies participate in practices with drills adapted to their skill level, then participate in challenges such as a stick-handling challenge and slap shot challenge. The last day is a night game at Munn Ice Arena.
“We adapt the drills to make it fun and challenging for everyone. Some players have never played hockey before while others play on adapted hockey teams,” Dunkel-Jackson said.
The award honors O’Ree, the first Black player in the NHL, who has spent more than two decades as the NHL’s diversity ambassador. The NHL flew Dunkel-Jackson and her son to Edmonton for game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final to announce the award, presented by Discover, during the TNT pregame show. Dunkel-Jackson hopes the publicity will provide a model for other communities to increase available accessible sports programs.
“We are so grateful to the NHL for giving us the opportunity to highlight our program,” she said. “We hope other communities are inspired to partner and develop similar programs because sports are for everyone.”
Programs supporting research
Hockey Challenge Camp is the second program that Dunkel-Jackson has co-created, bringing MSU into partnership with other community organizations. The first program, the Baseball Challenge League, is celebrating its fifth year in August.
“Through the program evaluation process, we asked what we could do to improve the Baseball Challenge League, and the overwhelming response was ‘we want more sports,’ so my son suggested hockey and we made it happen using the same format as with baseball but in a camp version instead of a league,” she said.
Dunkel-Jackson collected data on skills the players were learning and gathered feedback from families, fans, coaches, buddies and players through program evaluation, sharing her research findings in 2023 in the Journal of the Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities.
Upcoming camps
Registration is open for players, peer mentor and coaches for the Aug. 4-7 session of Hockey Challenge Camp.
Baseball Challenge League will begin at the end of August, and any players with unique medical and/or learning needs are encouraged to register.