The Special Olympics Pennsylvania Fall Festival will be hosted and organized by Villanova University students on both the University’s primary campus and the newly-acquired Cabrini campus this year.
As the largest annual student-run Special Olympics event in the world, Fall Fest features a variety of different sporting events for different age levels, with more than 40 Pennsylvania counties represented.
Fall Fest is scheduled to occur from Nov. 7 to Nov. 9, and most sports will be located on the University’s Main and West campuses.
The Cabrini campus will feature bocce as its only sport, alongside renovations for its grand opening as a working part of the University’s campus for the 2026-27 school year.
Regarding transportation, shuttles are scheduled to begin running at 12:15 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 7, running in 15 to 30-minute intervals throughout the weekend.
The on-campus shuttles will depart from both the Connelly Center and the Bartley Exchange, taking athletes either to West Campus or the Cabrini Campus for bocce.
Additionally, shuttles will be running to Agnes Irwin for volleyball.
“Everybody has to get on there at some point, and you’re going to meet athletes of all different counties and sports” Katherine Carney, Senior Transportation Committee chair, said. In addition to on-campus shuttles, off-campus shuttles will also be available to transport athletes to the University’s primary campus and the Cabrini Campus.
At each shuttle stop, coloring activities will be available to athletes, coinciding with this year’s theme of creating masterpieces.
Transportation is a great way to connect with athletes, volunteers and supporters of the Special Olympics Fall Fest.
In addition to bocce, the Cabrini campus will host the Fall Fest Jamboree.
“We’ll have all sorts of sensory areas and all different types of activities if athletes don’t want to sing and dance and that’s, like the main thing in the Jamboree, but if that’s like a lot, which it is for lot of people, they can go into some of those low sensory areas,” Carney said.
Just two years ago, Pennsylvania Special Olympics hosted Bocce in the Coliseum Sports Complex in Conshohocken, PA.
Last year’s Fall Fest was the first to feature bocce on the Cabrini Campus, setting a precedent for future events.
This year, bocce will once again be hosted at the Cabrini Campus’s Dixon Athletics Center, allowing athletes to be closer to the primary campus and Fall Fest as a whole.
“We’re going to have a mini O-Town there right outside the Dixon Center, because one of the biggest things that the athletes love coming to Fall Fest is to see O-Town,” senior and Bocce Committee Chair Teddy Archer said. “It is its own space, and we can kind of have creative liberty to just do whatever we want and make it feel like super special just for the athletes.”
Archer continued, “We’re going to have a lot of volunteers… we’re going to bring the energy anyway.”
Medical volunteers will be present for bocce at the Cabrini Campus for the first time in Fall Festival history, in addition to inclusion crew volunteers for bocce.
Food and drinks will be provided to athletes at the Cabrini Campus, with areas for rest and recovery provided, as well.
“Volunteering as an IC [inclusion crew] at Cabrini last year was a nice new perspective of SPO weekend. The facilities were very nice, and the setup was still very entertaining and upbeat with us being on a separate campus,” junior and volunteer Shannon Green said. “Although there weren’t as many people on Cabrini’s campus, the atmosphere was enthusiastic and there was lots of opportunities to spend time with the athletes.”
As Fall Fest approaches, the University is preparing to welcome and celebrate the athletes and their hard work.
Volunteers are encouraged to cheer on and support all sports, including all that will take place on the Cabrini campus.
