STARKVILLE — Anyone who arrived at Monday’s Unified Egg Bowl a few minutes after it ended would have found it difficult to determine which team had won the contest.
The third annual flag football game, featuring Special Olympic players and college student teammates from Ole Miss and Mississippi State, had all the competitive spirit of the regular Egg Bowl and none of the bitterness.
It was all high-fives, fist-bumps, smiles and hugs on both sides in the game played at the MSU intramural sports complex.
Mississippi State won the game — its first victory in the series — by a score of 42-18.
For Luke Robinson of Brandon, the victory was the perfect ending to his 36th birthday day.
Robinson was one of a few players who had played on the losing Bulldog team the previous two years.
In the first quarter, his mom, Connie Robinson, made a prediction.
“Mississippi State had better win,” she said. “Because if Luke loses again, he’s gonna be mad — for about five seconds.”
On the other side, Gavin Harris, 17, of Lake Cormorant, was making his first appearance in the game, playing quarterback for the Rebels. He wore No. 73, but he could be best identified by the broad smile that never left his face, even as he was playing.
“Oh, he’s absolutely loving this,” said his father, Jeff Harris. “He just started in Special Olympics this year. He does weight-lifting, softball and now flag football. I can’t tell you how much it’s done for his self-esteem. At his school, he’s not in the regular student population, so to be out here, playing with college students, with the crowd and the band and the cheerleaders, he’s just eating this up.”
How it began
The first Unified Egg Bowl was played at Mississippi State in 2014. Last year, the game moved to Oxford.
Mississippi Special Olympics had three goals in mind when it created the friendly competition between rival schools — to capitalize on the state’s biggest rivalry as a way of attracting attention to its Special Olympics programs, to increase interaction and build relationships between Special Olympians and the non-disabled community and to raise funds for its programs, which stages 40 events that draw 4,000 athletes each year.
“This game just gets better every year,” said Jim Beaugez, public relations director for Mississippi Special Olympics. “One of the goals we had when we started this was for both university’s to establish their own Special Olympic chapters, and that’s happened. The first year, we ran the game, but we wanted the universities to make this game their own, and we’re seeing that. Last year at Ole Miss, they did a lot of the things we had done the first year. And this year, Mississippi State has been responsible for about 95 percent of everything. So it’s turning out just as we hoped it would.”
What it has become
Mississippi State pulled out all the stops for the game. Members of the Famous Maroon Band turned out, as well as cheerleaders, the MSU ROTC and Bully, the Bulldog mascot. A crowd of about 200 people, including students with no connection to any of the players, turned out to support them.
The players got a similar reception last year at Ole Miss, and it seems the universities — being rivals — are engaged in a genial game of one-upmanship in making the Special Olympians feel, well, special.
“This is just so much fun for them,” Connie Robinson said. “This game is just so important for Luke, and I’m sure all of the other players. I know it’s all he’s talked about for weeks.”
In the first two years, the games raised a combined $25,000. Beaugez expects to have raised another $7,000 this year.
“We don’t charge anything for athletes to participate in our programs, so it’s important to raise money to cover the costs — everything from travel to uniforms, equipment, all the things an athlete needs to compete.”
After the awards ceremony had ended and group photos had been taken, the players chatted with their families, many of them ready for long car rides home.
The outcome of the game did nothing to dampen Gavin Harris’ enthusiasm, judging by his ever-present smile. Harris threw two touchdown passes, accounting for two of the Rebels’ three scores. When someone playfully observed that the Rebels might have won if Harris had had a little help, he smiled and observed in sweet candor.
“Yes, sir, that’s right!” he said.
Losing the game didn’t seem to weigh heavily on his mind.
“Oh, it was still fun,” he said. “It was so much fun.”
As for Luke Robinson, the fruits of victory were sweet. He was the first to rush the field, clanging away with his cowbell as the final seconds ticked off the clock in the MSU victory.
“This was fun,” he said. “But it’s fun every year. It doesn’t matter that we didn’t win before, but I’m glad we won tonight.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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