"Whenever I come to Unified Fitness, I always have a smile on my face," said Emma Kline, a Unified Fitness buddy and 10th-grade student at Solanco High School (SHS). "The heaviness of everything going on in life and in school just vanishes when we're out here."

Unified Fitness is a new six-week program at SHS that promotes inclusion among students through fitness activities. Before the program began, SHS students applied to serve as buddies for the Life Skills class, and SHS fitness and adapted physical education teacher Kacie Hershey grouped students into pairs.

The program is similar to the Special Olympics in that each Life Skills student completes a heptathlon, which focuses on strength, endurance, and agility. The heptathlon provides the Unified Fitness participants with the opportunity to compete in a sequence of seven different fitness exercises and measure their overall performance levels. Students will pick their own events from a wide range of exercise options in accordance with what best suits their individual needs or interests.

"I heard about the program in church when Ms. Hershey was talking about it, so I applied," said Unified Fitness buddy and 11th-grader Blake Cheney. "My favorite part has been getting to know Brandon, Michael, and Tyler (three of the Life Skills students)."

When the group members are not completing fitness exercises, they usually participate in fun games and activities in the gym or outdoors.

"It's awesome. My favorite activities are baseball and Wiffle ball!" exclaimed Brandon LeFevre, one of the Life Skills students. "I joined because I knew it would be fun."

This is the first year of the Unified Fitness program.

"The most rewarding part of the program is seeing how much of an impact it's making," said Hershey. "It's been rewarding to see the relationships grow and spread throughout the school. So now when I walk down the halls, I'll see students who met through the program talking to each other, and I think that's really special."