Shanan Sun
“And for a high-intensity game, I thought we’d do Pillo Polo,” Shanan Sun says.
“That’s such a good one,” says assistant movement science professor Haylie Miller. “If anyone gets bored, we could incorporate other materials into the game or start Pillo Polo-ing in the gym and snake out into the hallway. It’d be a change of scenery that’s still structured.”
“Great idea,” Sun says, making some notes on her laptop.
It’s three days before the second session of KidSport Adaptive begins, and the counselors are in planning mode. The new offshoot of the long-running KidSport camp is meant to better serve kids with neurodevelopmental and physical differences, and the staff does this partly by thoughtfully choosing and modifying the activities for each day based on the needs of the individual campers.
Sun, seated on the floor with her feet splayed in front of her, is leading the group discussion. A recent graduate of LSA’s biopsychology, cognition, and neuroscience program, she has worked in Miller’s Motor & Visual Development Laboratory since 2021 and will spend another year there as a research assistant while she applies to occupational therapy (OT) programs.
But, for these two weeks, she’s transformed into KidSport counselor and team lead. Miller, who partnered with Kinesiology Community Programs director Kerry Winkelseth to launch KidSport Adaptive this past summer, had given Sun the option of taking some time off from her lab responsibilities and focusing on KidSport. Sun already had experience in this realm; she’d served as a counselor at theater camps that were run by art, dance, and music therapists and included some time working one-on-one with neurodivergent kids.
“So, pretty much KidSport,” she says with a laugh.
Sun’s sister has a form of epilepsy and had gone to these innovative camps. Her mother had initially suggested that Sun could serve as a counselor so she could drive her sister, not expecting that her daughter would pursue a career in health care as a result. (Most of Sun’s family is in engineering.)
But Sun’s interest in OT and fine motor control did begin to incubate, helped along by Miller, whom she cold emailed after a psychology professor suggested she look beyond LSA for labs to work in during her time as an undergraduate.
“I feel like I got really lucky with this lab,” Sun says. “Some of my friends are in labs that don’t really align with their career goals, where they’re asked to do grunt work, basically. To have the opportunity to work with people with neurodevelopmental conditions in a lab that allows me to do things that will help me as an OT — it’s really special.”
In Miller’s lab, Sun has done everything from data entry to writing a review paper about upper extremity movement in autism to conducting children’s motor skill assessments through tabletop activities like pegboards and balancing exercises such as walking on a line and hopping.
“Some of the assessments I’ve learned to do here or we’ve talked about in this lab I’ve seen OTs do when I've been shadowing,” Sun says. “That’s been a really nice connection.”
And, most importantly, she’s had the opportunity to work directly with people with neurodevelopmental differences, a population she expects to serve regularly when she becomes an OT.
“This is something I knew in the back of my head already, but KidSport Adaptive brought to the forefront of my mind how when you have a child with higher support needs, as soon as you can meet those needs, it’s so much easier,” Sun says. “They’re so much more willing to participate in the activities you want them to be in, and everything runs so much more smoothly. And that’s what we tried our best to do in Adaptive.”
To have the opportunity to work with people with neurodevelopmental conditions in a lab that allows me to do things that will help me as an OT — it’s really special.