In the warmer months of the year, the Rochester Community Sports Complex bustles with activity. The stadium serves as the home to the Flower City Union soccer team and is often used for practice by local football and field hockey teams or drum and bugle corps. In the winter, this stadium, which has capacity for almost 14,000 people, lies mostly dormant, with only its indoor facilities like training rooms and classrooms seeing regular use. But on the cold and sunny morning of February 22, the field came alive for the 2025 Special Olympics New York Winter Games.

This year the soccer pitch was covered with several inches of snow and over 200 athletes from all nine regions in New York, who gathered here for the snowshoe competition. The site also hosted some of the cross-country skiing events. Throughout the day the athletes competed in more than a dozen events; short but intense races that pit the best of the state’s athletes in 25, 50, 100, 200, 400 and 4×100 meter relay challenges. This was an opportunity for athletes to hone their skills and demonstrate their unshakable drive for their chance to be the 2025 state champions.