Gabriel Hanson, a high school senior at the University School in Cleveland, Ohio, organized a charity swim meet, raising money for Autism Speaks in honor of his nine-year-old brother.
The unscored meet featured 7 local schools: University School, Chagrin Falls, Laurel, Hathaway Brown, Magnificat, St. Ignatius and Gilmour. Boys and girls swimmers from each team swam a condensed meet lineup that featured 50s and 100s of each stroke, plus 200 medley and 200 free relays. Entry fees for each swimmer along with spectator admission charges and concessions went directly to Autism Speaks, a non-profit focused on autism prevention, treatment and research.
The University School published a press release about the event, which you can view here. Hanson says he was motivated by his younger brother Michael, who has autism. “This is an issue that is obviously close to home for me,” Gabriel said in the release. “My goal is to increase awareness of autism and raise funds to bring hope to those kids and their families who are affected by the illness.”
You can find results of the meet here. We’ve also included a brief photo vault from the event below. All photos were provided by the University School.
There were probably some swimmers out there that had high functioning autism like Temple Grandlin of Animal research or Asperger’s As a kid they thought I had ADHD and as a 57 year young old I had one psychologist that thought I had Asperger’s. Now, people would be surprise of how many people are on the higher part of the spectrum of Autism