Jake Blatnica, a high school junior from Massachusetts, has hypotonia, mitochondrial myopathy, speech apraxia, and other disabilities. Among other sports, he plays "unified" basketball. After he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in one of his knees—the kind of injury that sidelines amateurs and professionals for extended periods of time—he did the work and made it back to playing.

USA Today named Mr. Blatnica “athlete of the year” for his high schools sports activites. Many other sites covered the story, using essentially the same content as the USA Today story, though a couple hidden behind paywalls give more information.

Having such an injury is probably a pretty terrible way to be included, but it happened. Among the sister- and brotherhood of those with ACL injuries, I'm guessing he'll fit right in. There's probably virtually no difference by disability status in the dedication required to make a comeback.

• See the coverage in USA Today about this story

• See the Twitter post from USA Today sports award

  USA TODAY High School Sports Awards @hssportsawards

  Special Olympics Athlete of the Year is Jake Blatnica! 👏 Jake has overcome odds and participates in unified bocce, unified track and unified 🏀 at his school in partnership with Special Olympics Massachusetts. He also participates in Indoor Track. Congrats! #USATODAYHSSA

  August 6th 2021

  5 Retweets54 Likes

• See the Special Olympics background on "Unified sports"

• See a local newspaper report of the story (paywall) and another report of the story (also paywall).