The most decorated Olympian, Michael Phelps, the Arizona Interscholastic Association and Special Olympics Arizona are partnering up for a special cause.

This year, the AIA will add swimming to its list of sanctioned Unified Sports events for special needs students thanks to Phelps’ foundation and Special Olympics Arizona. High schools that participate in Unified Swimming this season will compete in a co-hosted invitational Oct. 22 at Arizona State’s Mona Plummer Aquatic Facility.

The goal of Phelps’ foundation is to ‘promote water safety, healthy living and the pursuit of dreams.’

Phelps now resides in the Valley, and his coach, Bob Bowman, is the swim coach at ASU, where Phelps will be a volunteer assistant. In 2011, Special Olympics Arizona and the AIA formed a partnership to establish a state-wide Unified Sports program.

In Unified Sports, the athletes, high school students with intellectual disabilities, and their partners, students without intellectual disabilities, train and compete. Swimming is the seventh event that the AIA and Special Olympics Arizona will now offer as a Unified Sport.

“Because Unified Sports is trying to expand, this is a great opportunity for the swimming peace to have an Olympian willing to give back to a group of kids who may not have the opportunity in any other setting,” said David Hines, the AIA’s assistant executive director. “That’s a tribute to Michael Phelps, who is willing to work with students.”