Special Olympics of Wyoming Looking for Volunteers at Upcoming Meeting
According to a press release, the Special Olympics Wyoming’s Casper Program will have a meeting on Aug. 17 for all current and prospective athletes, coaches, parents, and volunteers.
The meeting will be held at 6:00 p.m. at Central Wyoming Senior Services, 1831 E. 4th Street in Casper.
Laura Kelly, Director of Program Services with Special Olympics, said the main goal of the event is to find more volunteers to help with administration and coaching.
"The more volunteers the better because Casper is such a big city in Wyoming," Kelly said. "A smaller town can maybe get away with one local coordinator and three to five coaches, but since we're so much bigger, rather than handing over a whole volunteer position to just one person to take over all of Casper, we're hoping to make it a little bit easier on all volunteers by saying maybe this one person is just in charge of fundraising, and maybe the next person is just in charge of communicating with coaches, and then the next person is just in charge of setting up a local game or local competition. So the more the better and the less stress it'll place on any one person the more help we can have."
While Kelly said that they're looking for as many volunteers as they can get, she said that starting with five people would be a good place to start.
The volunteers will be helpful in setting up future games that the Special Olympics is holding in Casper, one from Oct. 6 to 7 and another in the winter, which will be the first time those events have been held since 2019 because of COVID-19.
Kelly said she doesn't know what turnout will be like for their upcoming games, at their Summer Sports Classic last week, their smallest statewide event, it had 185 athletes, coaches, and volunteers show up, it was their biggest ever, and was larger than the same event they held in 2019 which had less than 160 people.