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Police officer Brian Dickerson, of the Richmond Police Department, reaches out... (DAN ROSENSTRAUCH)
LAFAYETTE -- For student athletes in sports-centric Bay Area schools, traveling to away meets and games can mean a boring bus ride, unfamiliar turf and borrowing team uniforms that were forgotten at the last minute.
But for most of the 330 athletes competing in Special Olympics Northern California's Bay Area Games, meeting on the fields at Lafayette's Acalanes High School on Tuesday was an honor and the beginning of a new era.
School systems from three counties -- Contra Costa, San Francisco and San Mateo -- sent K-12 special education student-athletes to compete in track and field events for the inaugural event that is an expansion of Special Olympics' Schools Partnership Program.
Rick Collett, Special Olympics Northern California president and CEO, said the existing program in which students at individual schools competed