The Best Kind of Losing: Angela, Carey, Special Olympics, and a $10,000 Floor Hockey Game
I will admit, without embarrassment, that I walked onto that floor thinking we had a shot.
Angela Price had challenged my team to a Compete for a Cause match. She showed up with the Special Olympics BC floor hockey athletes from Kelowna. Committed competitors who, it turned out, had no interest in going easy on anyone. And then, in the way that Angela Price does things, she deployed Carey as a not-so-secret weapon.
We lost. Badly, actually. And it was one of the best afternoons I have had in this work.
The energy in that room had nothing to do with score. It had everything to do with spirit. The Special Olympics athletes brought the full measure of their training and intensity. These are people who take their sport seriously, who show up and compete and give it everything, and who deserve opponents who meet them at that level. Carey did. Angela did. The whole afternoon had the quality of a real competition, which is exactly what it should have been.
Special Olympics exists to give athletes with intellectual disabilities access to real sport. Real coaching, real competition, real community. The best thing you can do for that mission is not to patronize it. It is to take it seriously. To lace up, show up, and genuinely try. That is what happened on that floor, and the athletes felt the difference.
When the final whistle blew, the Price family announced a $10,000 gift to Special Olympics BC. Delivered without spectacle. Just a decision to use the occasion for something bigger than the scoreboard.
Competition is one of the most underused tools in the philanthropic toolkit. When it is done right, it generates something that no gala dinner or pledge drive quite matches. It generates memory. It generates relationship. It generates the kind of shared story that a community tells itself about who it is and what it values.
Angela, Carey, the Price family: thank you. You played hard. You gave generously. And you left the place better than you found it. Honestly? I would lose to you again.
