Two hundred people will head to the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Roxbury tomorrow for the 15th annual TILL Games, which bring together athletes with and without disabilities to compete.
This, the co-director of the games said, is what distinguishes them from the Special Olympics.
"There you are only highlighting people with disabilities, and I'm trying to do a bit of both," says Paula Aiesi. Toward Independent Living and Learning Inc. of Dedham, or TILL, is staging the games.
The organization offers residential, clinical and family support services and programs for people with disabilities and their families in eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.
Whether you are a 5-year-old child or a 45-year-old with Down syndrome, athletes are treated equally, Aiesi says. She says she does not care if a competitor has autism, for example.
"I just want to know, 'Do you want to come and run, and how fast are you' because I need to put you in the appropriate race," says Aiesi, director of community connections for the nonprofit group.
"People compete on a level of ability rather than their diagnoses," notes organization president Dafna Krouk-Gordon.
This year's games, which will be held Saturday between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., will include 50- and 100-meter sprints, 100-meter racewalks, a 1-mile run, wheelchair contests and youth fun runs.
Aiesi says the exciting climax of the day is the 4-by-400 team relay race, in which each squad is made up of two people who do not have disabilities and two people who do.
Athletes at TILL group homes have been training for months for the games. The team practicing at the Randolph High track draws people from Dedham, Stoughton and the South Shore. That team is coached by John Stevens, the group's special projects director. Stevens runs the games with Aiesi.
"There is a sense of worth, a sense of accomplishment, of camaraderie, and commitment," Stevens says. "There's just so much to it - the belonging to something."
Aiesi says most of the 200 athletes registered this year have disabilities. The competitors without disabilities are drawn from family members and her organization's staff.
Bringing the two together is not easy.
"Trying to get things integrated is very, very difficult. We live in a world where people are very uncomfortable at times competing with people with disabilities," she says.
In the past, some people have even slowed down approaching the finish line because they didn't think they should win.
"That's not why I had you in this race," Aiesi recalls. "That's like letting a kid you're trying to teach a card game win because you don't want them to feel bad."
Daily News staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
