Kaytlan Branch found the Special Olympics T-shirts in a closet. They were in a container, tucked away, and when she pulled them out and asked about them, she was told that nobody had done Special Olympics at Centralia High School in a long time. She didn't know much about the program at the time. She went home and researched it. Then she called the regional manager, Trevor Mann, and asked what it would take to get started. Within a year, she had students signed up, forms completed, measurements and time scores logged, and a group of kids on a bus headed to compete. That's a pretty accurate snapshot of how Kaytlan operates.

She is a paraprofessional in the high school's self-contained special education classroom, a role she found after a series of life changes that happened in rapid succession starting in 2022. That year, she had a daughter, started college for the first time, left a veterinary career she'd spent years building, and took a job at a school. She was twenty-something, living independently with her fiancé, and running entirely on the kind of determination that doesn't announce itself — it just gets things done.

Kaytlan graduated from Centralia High School in 2017. College wasn't the next step, not because she didn't want it, but because the math didn't work. Her mother's income made her ineligible for full financial aid, her father wasn't in the picture, and she concluded there was simply no path in. She worked retail and fast food while pursuing what she actually wanted — a position in veterinary medicine. It took a few years, but she got there, eventually working as a surgical vet tech, helping prep animals for procedures and assisting in the operating room.

Then came the pregnancy. Complications left her bedridden for months, and when she returned, her employer had made clear that her limitations were a problem. The 12-to-16-hour days that had been her norm were incompatible with being a new mother anyway. She started looking for something else. A friend mentioned that paraprofessionals work school hours. She hadn't known that was a job. She applied.

Around the same time, her aunt Jennifer Dunbar told her something else she hadn't known: that as an independent adult with a child, she would qualify for grants, FAFSA assistance, and scholarships that hadn't been available to her at 18. "I just thought, well, if I don't apply, I can't get it," Kaytlan says. "So I just never even looked into it." She applied for everything. She got accepted. In August 2022 — four months after her daughter was born — she enrolled at Rend Lake College. She transferred to Southern Illinois University Carbondale in the fall of 2024. She finishes her bachelor's degree in psychology in May.

After that comes a master's program in counseling — fully online, like her undergraduate work, which she'll pair with the required 700 hours of practicum and internship time at clinics. Her goal is to become a licensed professional counselor, a credential she expects to complete by around 2029. She is doing all of this while working full-time, raising a daughter now in preschool, and coaching Special Olympics bowling in nearby Central City.

The Special Olympics program at the high school is something she built from nothing. She researched the requirements, connected with regional leadership, handled the enrollment paperwork, and began training six to eight students in the classroom and during their daily PE period. They practice running and walking events — staying in their lane, maintaining the right pace — and learn proper throwing form for the softball and tennis ball throw. Every spring, they load onto a bus for the regional meet, with families waiting there to cheer them on. Last year, a rainstorm canceled part of the event, and for the students who missed their one competition of the year, the school set up a makeshift throwing competition on the football field, complete with medals. "Even if they don't win, most of them get a participation medal," Kaytlan says. "And if they do win, they stand up there, and everybody takes pictures. It's great."

Her connection to the program is personal. Her mother is in the process of adopting a girl with Down syndrome who has lived with the family for four or five years and competes in Special Olympics herself. Watching her sister participate is part of what made the container of shirts in that closet mean something. "Some of these kids realize they're excluded, and it makes them upset," Kaytlan says. "Some of these parents will never get to see their child advance in a sport. This is their opportunity." She knows this not as an abstract principle, but as something she's watched from two sides now — as a sister and as a coach. The kids who don't always get included get a day where everything is for them. She shows up to make sure it happens.