Like many first year students, senior Jane Butler was extremely homesick during her first semester on campus. That was, until she discovered Villanova’s Special Olympics program. Since her first year, Butler has continued to become increasingly involved with the organization, and this year she serves as the 2025 Festival Director.
Butler is a humanities major from outside Boston. Her passion for inclusion began during her high school years when she began volunteering for Newton Athletes Unlimited. There, she worked at a summer camp for high-school-aged students with disabilities.
“When I came to Villanova, I really just missed [Athletes Unlimited],” Butler said. “I really missed it because it is such an important part of my life…when I got here Special Olympics is what felt most like it.”
Throughout her time involved within Villanova’s Special Olympics, Butler has served in a plethora of roles. Her freshman year she was a part of the Local Program Hosts (LPH) program as a supporter of Montgomery County.
Her first year on Special Olympics Committee, Butler was assigned to the Soccer Committee.
“I always would joke, when I was on soccer, that soccer was never a sport that I really cared for,” Butler said. “I did not really ever enjoy playing it or watching it, but I locked in for Special Olympics soccer and it was so cool to see. Those games were so fun. On [the] Sunday morning every single match went into penalty kicks…it is so neat to just see athletes compete.”
During her junior year, Butler was a part of the Athlete Involvement Committee, which is in charge of bringing Villanova students to different athletic practices throughout the semester.
“I loved that,” Butler said. “I [would go], like, three times a week and got to meet a ton of people and then see them at Fall Fest. Forming those relationships is so cool.”
This year as Festival Director, Butler is experiencing a new side of Special Olympics.
In this role, Butler is the primary point of contact between Villanova’s Special Olympics and Special Olympics Pennsylvania and was in charge of selecting the Management Team and overseeing committee selection. She also is at the forefront of planning logistics, Committee bonding and ensuring the weekend of Fall Fest runs smoothly and accordingly.
The selection process for Special Olympics occurs over a few months span, with Butler selecting the Management Team early last semester.
“I was selected right after Thanksgiving,” Butler said. “So, I started in December and it was so close to finals that I could not do much. I released [the Management Team] application over break…and then [they] were interviewed and selected over the first week of classes in the Spring Semester. Then it takes about two months to select a committee, so I want to say Committee started in early March or really late February.”
From there, the Volunteer Coordinators are selected around April, and Inclusion Crew and LPH happens early during Fall Semester.
The role of Festival Director takes on the role of Committee morale and connections, as well. This begins by the Committee Members being placed according to who Butler and the members of Management Team believe will work well together.
Additionally, the Special Olympics committee has a retreat each semester, with a smaller one in the Spring and the bigger retreat which takes place off campus in early fall.
“We go camping for three days,” Butler said. “It sounds so nuts because I took their phones and I did not tell anyone what was planned. It is always very sweet…we bring in team building facilitators and we do scavenger hunts and we make smores. It is very wholesome fun. I feel like that moment is very important for bringing people closer together and we are very lucky to be able to go do something like that.”
Another aspect of Fall Fest that makes the weekend special is how each year there is a different theme. The 2025 theme is “Let Yours Passions Unleash, Create Your Masterpiece.”
This theme came together with Butler and members from the Special Events committee in a classroom in Driscoll working together to come up with the perfect combination for a theme.
“We are in a room and [everyone] just pitches [ideas],” Butler said. “We write it on the board and then we discuss. It is just a couple of hours of just talking about it. [This year’s] theme was not suggested until later in the conversation.”
While the theme is used for the promotional materials going into the weekend, it is also heavily included within Fall Fest itself.
“It started with [the word] art museum and then we were, like, ‘how does that make sense?’” Butler said. “Then we had kind of conceptualized it. It is cool to see them come up with tangible ideas, like, with them being, like, ‘well, we want the Victory Jamboree to look like this and this is what we are going to do for this big thing and this is what the O-Town banner would look like if we went with this theme.’ So, once we were able to visualize it, we were, like, alright this is it.”
The theme seeps into each part of the weekend, but all and all the weekend is surrounded by competition-the main reason the athletes travel to Villanova each fall.
“Practicing with teams is a really cool way to see how much Fall Fest means to them,” Butler said. “I think about the Del-Co Hawks volleyball because qualifying for Fall Fest is a big deal for them, and everyone who plays, and I think that people do not recognize that to make it to Fall Fest is a huge accomplishment…when athletes find out they qualify it is a huge deal.”
The athletes compete in a variety of sectional and divisional competitions in order to qualify for Fall Fest.
While the weekend is about these competitions, the athletes gain a lot more from the weekend aside from playing their sports.
“It is the fall championship games but it is also so much fun,” Butler said. “[The athletes] love O-Town and the Victory Jamboree and stuff like that, which they do not get at every competition. There is no other school where the whole campus looks different and where every student gets involved….and because of that, Fall Fest is super special and athletes work so hard to get here.”
Each year, Fall Fest strives to improve. With competitions moving to Cabrini’s campus to making improvements with the Closing Celebrations, Butler and the committee strive to make minor improvements that will continue to make Fall Fest better for the athletes and their families who travel to compete.
For Butler, it’s more than just the behind the scenes work, it’s getting to see her own work, the work of the committee and the efforts of all 4,000+ volunteers coming to life.
“Meeting them and hearing about their stories and what got them here, you can tell that it is just very meaningful,” Butler said. “It feels really nice to know that something that felt like me on my laptop all year was able to affect someone in a positive way.”
While this is Butler’s last year as a student involved with Fall Fest, her hope for the future of Special Olympics at Villanova is for it to continue to grow in a sustainable way.
