{"id":841363,"date":"2026-03-21T20:32:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T20:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/841363\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T20:32:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T20:32:29","slug":"kentucky-unified-basketball-team-prepares-for-usa-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/841363\/","title":{"rendered":"Kentucky Unified Basketball team prepares for USA Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">RICHMOND, Ky. (WKYT) &#8211; Team Kentucky is preparing to compete at the USA Games in June as part of Special Olympics\u2019 Unified Basketball League, which brings together athletes with intellectual disabilities and those without them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The program creates teams where athletes with special needs and athletes without them play together, with social inclusion at the heart of its mission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Coach Eric Piernas Jr. said he got involved with the league a few years ago as a unified athlete partner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI was actually fortunate enough to go to the 2022 USA games with Team Kentucky, and so that was an awesome experience,\u201d Piernas said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Piernas said athletes will build upon more than their basketball skills at the games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI know a couple of our athletes, they haven\u2019t been to the airport before, so sometimes this is a really big trip for them where they get to experience everything, going through the airport, getting on planes, or even this might be the athletes first time going out the state of Kentucky or a large-scale trip,\u201d Piernas said. \u201cSo for us to be part of that and offer them that process is really awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"link | text-reset d-block h-100 w-100\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wkyt.com\/page\/wkyt-apps-for-ios-and-android-devices\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_self\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"WKYT Streaming Apps\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774125149_47_MEPHTWNVMREWLEQQWWFJM27ZMA.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Unified partner Eli Just said the process has been rewarding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cAt the end of the day, we\u2019re all athletes, we just want to play a sport,\u201d Just said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Athlete Daniel Hewitt said playing basketball is fun, but the friendships keep him coming back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cYou get to meet new friends and do new things,\u201d Hewitt said. \u201cWhen I get down, they cheer me up. Basically, its really fun. I\u2019m glad I got this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Team Kentucky will compete in the USA Games in Minneapolis in June.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WKYT. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RICHMOND, Ky. (WKYT) &#8211; Team Kentucky is preparing to compete at the USA Games in June as part&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[12123,240720,240721,240719,49,978,659,140231],"class_list":{"0":"post-841363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-intellectual-disabilities","9":"tag-special-olympics-kentucky","10":"tag-unified-basketball","11":"tag-unified-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-usa","15":"tag-usa-games"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116269072001597583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}