Volunteers are the backbone of Special Olympics Pennsylvania. Without our volunteers, we’d never be able to provide competition, leadership, health and so many other opportunities to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities throughout Pennsylvania.
Congratulations to volunteer official Marlon Boone, from the Greater Lehigh Valley Pocono Region, for being named our Volunteer of the Month for January 2025!
With each local event, regional sectional, or state competition, officials help execute some of Special Olympics Pennsylvania’s most memorable moments. For Marlon, he’s consistently focused on athlete growth, sportsmanship, and positive competition.
Marlon’s love for sports started during his childhood, as well as his love for helping others. From training his siblings in basketball to spending extra free time with his town’s local youth program, being a part of people’s betterment was a calling Marlon wanted to nurture.
Since volunteering with Special Olympics, Marlon has witnessed the impact sports and organized programming have had on athletes, coaches, parents, and caretakers. This combination of sport and giving back to his community was the perfect mix.
In Marlon’s story below, you’ll learn just how much officiating for Special Olympics Pennsylvania has affected his own life.
Thank you, Marlon, for volunteering with us no matter the season.
“I volunteer my time for basketball and volleyball. For the past couple of years, I volunteered for Villanova, the Kutztown event, and a special event held in Philly for Michelle Cordell.
I’ve volunteered for basketball and volleyball for years. The first year I joined, I received an email in my chapter for officials, and they were looking for officials for the Kutztown tournament. I volunteered for Kutztown for basketball, and I had such a good time doing it. After that, I did it for volleyball at DeSales. Since then, I just haven’t stopped.
I just enjoy doing it. A lot of the athletes know me, a lot of the coaches know me. I have a good time with the athletes. I have a good time with the parents. I have a good time with coaches. It’s all about fun, making sure they’re enjoying themselves.
I’ve been officiating for nine years. I do high school sports, basketball and volleyball. I played a lot of sports growing up. I grew up in Jersey City, NJ, the outskirts of New York. I played basketball, I played football, and I boxed, so my parents always kept us busy. Growing up in the city, a lot of things were free, so my mother would say, ‘Get out of the house, this is what you’re gonna do.”
Basketball and boxing were my sports. After my junior year of sports, I got basketballed out and wanted to hang out with my friends… I still stayed involved in basketball because I had a brother and sister that played, so I worked with them and went to their games and cheered them on.
From there, I moved to Bethlehem, PA in ‘99. I ran a youth organization, and I volunteered my time in the community for 15 years for an organization called Lehigh County Youth Association, located in Allentown to keep the kids off the street, to keep them busy. I coached football there and I was the basketball coordinator. I attended all the meetings for basketball, football.
I kept the kids occupied in the summertime. Believe it not, during the summertime, they would ring my phone and say, ‘Coach, are you coming down to the park?’ And I would say, ‘We don’t have practice today,’ and they would say, ‘Come on down, come on down.’
So, I would come down to the park, we would get the water out, I would get the pizza, and we hung and played basketball. My wife would say, ‘The kids are calling you, I’ll see you later,’ because she always knew where I was. That’s what I did down there.
I volunteer so much that I went back to school for social work at 50 years old. I’m back in school right now for social work. I received my B.S.W and now I’m going to Millersville for my masters and I’m looking at becoming a school social worker because the teachers are overwhelmed.
The students are overwhelmed. The families are overwhelmed. They need resources to help them progress… Social work is my thing right now. I’m going to be volunteering my time for social work too.
Volunteering with Special Olympics Pennsylvania, man, I have a good time. It’s fun… I stay in touch with the coaches and some of the directors. We talk once in a while. Montgomery County Special Olympics, Lehigh Valley, we all stay in contact. ‘Hey, how you doing? What’s going on? Everything good?’
Samantha, my girl. She’s an athlete and I call her, ‘Modified.’ The first time I met her I was volunteering volleyball, and she got sassy with me. I said, ‘You need to back up,’ and she said, ‘No I don’t, I’m modified.’
Every time I see her, that’s what she says… I enjoy this. I volunteer at Villanova all day. I’m not there for four hours. I’m there from beginning to end. I love Villanova. All the athletes see me, and I even got in trouble last year. I had them all dancing during ‘Sweet Caroline.’
It’s just a good time.
I have so many favorite memories… What I enjoy most about the environment at competition is it’s competitive. I’m a basketball official, so I get yelled at, I get cursed at, I got water thrown at me, popcorn thrown at me. I got called all types of names even though the team loses by 30, it’s still my fault.
With Special Olympics, in these competitions, it’s competitive, but it’s not competitive. Some of the coaches are competitive, some of them want to win but they don’t win and push the athletes to the limit. They understand what they’re capable of doing and what they cannot do. In volleyball, if they touch the ball twice, they shake their head.
In basketball here, I can talk to the athletes. ‘Stick your hands out, move your feet, don’t reach, don’t swing your hands.’ For Special Olympics, I can tell the coach I can talk to them… It’s competitive, but people don’t get stressed out about it.
What would I say to people to volunteer? Well, I’ve gotten a bunch of officials to volunteer, and I got them in just by saying, ‘Volunteers are welcomed. You’re treated fairly. The athletes and the parents, they’ll appreciate you.’
Appreciation is the big thing with volunteering because it’s like you’re giving the parents a break. They can actually watch their athlete, their child in a game, enjoying themselves. I get a lot of parents telling me that they enjoy watching me and they love watching their child play and have a good time…
Another thing I always say to the officials is, ‘If we don’t do it, nobody will do it, and they won’t have it.’
It’s the truth. If we don’t volunteer, if we don’t give our time, they’re not going to have it. Like right now, my youth organization folded simply because COVID killed us… Instead of having that away game on Saturday or Sunday, parents said they would rather stay home.
For Special Olympics, it’s just growing. For me, I’m trying to figure out how to volunteer for World Games.
Just do it. Come volunteer. You’ll have a good time. The athletes will love you. The families will love you. The organization is great. Volunteers are needed.”
