Smith Weber-Sandager has his arm casually draped around Carol Frey’s chair. He wears a suit, complete with a vest, tie and black pants. She wears a two-piece, hot-pink ball gown. It is strapless, but for modesty she wears a small white T-shirt underneath. Her hair is in a curled, beautiful updo, and she nibbles at her thumbnail.

They look like they might be going to prom, or maybe a wedding. They definitely look like a couple.

She’s not his girlfriend, though. And he’s not her boyfriend. Instead they are one another’s best friend – and their mothers are thrilled they found one another.

Frey, 28, and Weber-Sandager, 29, both of Albuquerque, N.M., met through ballroom dance. They are decked out in their finest on this recent Saturday afternoon in late July to compete in the Heart & Soul of Ballroom Dancing, the official name of the Special Olympics ballroom dancing competition. Both have Down syndrome.

“If I heard it once, I heard it a hundred times: These dancers touch my heart, and they put so much soul into their dancing,” says Vivian Hans, who organized the competition for Fort Wayne Dancesport, a division of USA Dance Inc.

Held at Grand Wayne Center, the event is the only one of its kind in the country, and for the first time this year, it opened its doors to out-of-state dancers, drawing competitors from Kentucky and New Mexico. Because it’s the only ballroom event for Special Olympics, it hopes to continue to draw out-of-state dancers – or encourage states to start their own competitions.

The ballroom event this year was broadcast live on three websites through USA Dance, Hans says.

“(This year’s event) went very well,” she says. “Everyone really seemed to enjoy it. Things went very well, very timely. We had lots and lots of smiling faces, and that’s what makes the events great. The athletes really enjoyed it.”

And she expects it to continue to grow: Hans knows of 27 dancers in Rhode Island who were unable to raise enough money for all their dancers this year, and they plan to come next year. In Cincinnati, 45 Special Olympians’ partners had a date conflict, and they hope to compete next year, too.

This year’s competition drew about 95 dancers, which included non-Special Olympian amateur dancers, whose fees pay for the event, Hans says. Forty-two dancers were Special Olympians and danced for free.

‘You can do anything’

The room is crowded. Family and friends observe from their seats or the special sectioned-off area intended for photography. More than one proud father captures every step and twirl with a camcorder.

The mood is casual. The dancers, dressed in their finest, look almost out of place. Or maybe it’s the audience who looks out of place in flip flops, tank tops and Capri pants.

For some competitors, their nerves are taking over.

Shay Prouty, of Huntington County, seemed more nervous than most. Prouty competed in the skills competition, which tested dancers unable to grasp multiple steps on particular skills. During the competition, she approached Dave Cowdrey, who teaches her and other northeast Indiana Special Olympians.

“Dave, I can’t do it,” she says.

“Sure you can,” he tells her. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

It’s a short pep talk, but it does the job.

“OK,” Prouty says, and she shuffles off back to her seat.

“She gets nervous,” Cowdrey says.

Prouty lives in a group home, and Cowdrey doesn’t think she has any family attending the event.

Meanwhile, it’s clear where Weber-Sandager and Frey’s families are. There is shouting when it is announced they won the gold for their heat in the waltzing division.

Liz Frey, Carol’s mother, cannot stop snapping photos with her phone.

“This one’s going on Facebook,” she says.

Finding his way

Four years ago, Weber-Sandager told his family: “I need a girlfriend.”

“If you want a girlfriend,” his grandmother advised, “you need to learn to dance. All the girls love to dance.”

Weber-Sandager took his grandma’s advice to heart. She paid for his first set of dance lessons and his family stood back to see how it would go.

“We didn’t think it’d stick,” his mother, Susie Sandager, says, but “we saw quickly that he had a talent.”

After a year of dancing, Weber-Sandager found Frey, who has now been his dancing partner for three years.

Frey and Weber-Sandager are a rarity. They are what is called a traditional couple, or one made up of two Special Olympians. The majority of the couples competing include one Special Olympian and one unified dancer, usually a dancer currently taking lessons who has agreed to volunteer to dance with a Special Olympian.

Dancers have a range of disabilities, including Down syndrome, higher-functioning autism and deafness, Hans says a few days before the competition.

Hans is watching a practice at Renaissance Ballroom Dance Studio in Ossian, which Cowdrey owns.

At the final practice before the event, it is clear that these dancers’ skills are all over the place: One dancer has two left feet. Another has two right feet. A third’s feet might as well be wings, as she seems to float across the dance floor.

Many concentrate. Their eyebrows are furrowed, and they watch their feet to make sure they step correctly to Cowdrey’s walk-side-together, walk-side-together, smile-side-together waltz instruction. He just might be the cheeriest drill marshal to ever give these orders.

“Some of you must have lost something on the floor,” he tells his dance students, and they are confused. No one appears to have lost anything, but Cowdrey insists. “You must have. You were all looking down.”

His little joke is met with laughter, and faces turn up. The dancers don’t make eye contact but instead stare somewhere over their partner’s shoulder.

At least they’re not looking down.

His tip is remembered: At the Heart & Soul of Ballroom Dancing, it’s hard to find a single face turned to the floor.

jyouhana@jg.net