Personal Essay

By Addison Heck

2026 Anne MacKay Scholarship winner Addison Heck of Riverhead High School.

I was nine years old at a birthday party when I realized l was different. Everyone was eating cake. I could not. l had just been diagnosed with celiac disease, which means gluten makes me sick, and at nine I did not fully understand why there was a table full of food I could not touch and a room full of kids who could. I also have Type I Diabetes, which I manage every day, but it was that birthday cake, the one thing everyone else just got to have without thinking, that first taught me what it feels like to be on the outside of something for reasons completely out of your control. Nobody was mean about it. But there is a kind of loneliness that comes from being the kid whose needs make everything a little more complicated. I knew what that felt like before I knew what to call it.

 I think about that moment a lot when I am at Unified Sports practice.

Unified Sports is a program that puts students with and without intellectual disabilities on the same varsity teams. At Riverhead, I captain all four of our Unified teams: soccer, golf. bowling, and basketball. Nobody assigned me to this. I kept showing up because I wanted to. The first time I saw a Unified game, something clicked. My teammates worked so hard and cared so much. They just wanted to be part of something without anyone making it into a big deal. I recognized that feeling. I had been that kid at the birthday party.

What I did not expect was how much I would learn from them. My teammates bring more energy to practice than anywhere else I have been in four years of high school. They do not take any of it for granted. Being around that changed how I think about inclusion. It is not really a program or a club. It is a choice you make, over and over, in small moments. As captain, I make sure our teams feel that way too.

This past spring, I took one of my teammates shopping to help her find a prom dress. It had nothing to do with a game or a school event. She wanted help, and I wanted to go. Watching her try on dresses and light up when she found the right one, l kept thinking about the difference between including someone and just letting them be around. She was not a project or a responsibility. She was my friend. That feels like one of the most important things I have figured out in high school.

I also wanted more people to understand what Unified Sports actually looks like, so l started and now run @riverhead.unitiedsports on Instagram. I post about our athletes, our games, and the everyday moments people do not always see. A lol of people walk right past a Unified game without knowing what they are watching. I wanted to change that, and I have.

Through CAP, our Community Awareness Program, I present to fifth and sixth grade students about alcohol and drug awareness and healthy decision making. There is something different about talking to a group of middle schoolers about what it feels like to be left out when you have actually felt that way yourself. I am not reading off a poster. I can see when something lands, and I know what it means for someone to feel understood.

Music and theater have been part of this too. I am a drum major, a section leader in band, and I have been part of 30 productions over the past four years, including shows with Riverhead Faculty and Community Theatre and North Fork Community Theatre. In every one of those spaces, I have seen the same thing: things work better when people feel like they belong. That is true on a team, in a cast, and in a classroom.

Riverhead is where I grew up. The North Fork is where all of this happened. I will be the first in my family to go to college, and l think about that a lot. I have seen this community ask hard questions about who belongs and who gets a chance to lead. I do not think those questions are finished. But I do think that a Tuesday afternoon Unified Sports game, where students with and without disabilities compete together and celebrate together, matters more than most people realize.

I am going to study Adolescent Inclusive Mathematics Education, with minors in Music Education and Musical Theatre. I want to teach middle school math because that is when a lot of students decide they are not a math person. I want to be there before that happens. I want to build a classroom where every student feels like they deserve to be there.   I did not choose to have Type I Diabetes or celiac disease. But I chose Unified Sports, CAP, thirty shows, and a future in inclusive education. All of it goes back to being nine years old at a birthday party and learning what it feels like to be on the outside. Once you know that feeling, and you have the chance to make sure someone else does not feel it too, you take it.   Anne MacKay spent her life teaching, creating, and building community on the North Fork. That is the kind of life I am already building.