2013-10-16-BlindAthletics

Seminars@Hadley

Sports for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired

Presented by

Andrew Leibs – Author, The Encyclopedia of Sports and Recreation for People with Visual Impairments

Moderated by

Larry Muffet

October 16, 2013

Larry Muffet

Welcome to Seminars at Hadley, my name is Larry Muffet, I'm a member of Hadley's seminars team and I also work in curricular affairs. Today's seminar topic is Sports for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired. Our presenter today is just the one to discuss this topic – Andrew Leibs is not only a blind athlete but also an author of several books including “The Encyclopedia of Sports and Recreation for People with Visual Impairments.” Andrew was named New Hampshire sports' writer of the year in 1997 and, get ready for this people, he's run five Boston Marathons, biked across the country and participated in a US blind cycling training camp, an Outward Bound course and a Nordic ski program. Makes me a little winded just reading all of that.

Today Andrew will be sharing his insights with you on sports and recreation for people who are blind or visually impaired. So now, without any further ado, let me welcome Andrew and turn the microphone over to him.

Andrew Leibs

Good afternoon everybody, this is Andrew Leibs. It's great to be here, I love talking about sports for the blind or visually impaired. Allow me to continue Larry's introduction of me, as I said, my name is Andrew, I am a writer of sports from New Hampshire. I am legally blind and have been since birth due to rare albinism. My main job is covering assistance technology for the company about.com. As Larry said, I am the author of three books, the most recent one is “The Encyclopedia of Sports and Recreation for People with Visual Impairments” and that book is published by Information Age Publishing, Charlotte North Carolina. Their website is infoagepub.com. The book is also on Amazon and it's digital talking book 76499 from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. It is also being recorded by Book Share and is a voice set book by learning ally, which apparently is a new kind of recording that includes the ability to read along with text.

I've played sports all my life and I still do, I still do things now, although not as much as I did in the past. I still bike, I take kick-boxing, and various boot-camp classes. As Larry said I've won five Boston marathons and biked across the country, all that stuff. One of my most vivid memory of a blind athlete came when I was eighth grade, when I got lost in the woods doing a lead cross-country meet at St. Louis. It was one of those things when I had to stop and wait for people behind me to show up, to know where to go. I was so ashamed I finished 10th instead of winning the 5th place medal I was capable of.

Well, it's funny, 11 years later I got a Boston marathon medal. No one thinks I got lost in that course, anyway. But the funny thing was when I saw the results, the second place person, the person ahead of me was just 10 seconds in front of me, so it just struck me as very strange that one of us hadn't known where to go in eighth grade, I would have done it, but knowing there was a guy ten seconds ahead I think I would have past him.

So I've heard of life changing events that saved your life, and after a few days I saw how and why this happens. That mere step from fearing to even trying something, to trusting a guy, to pushing off gives people a new way of encountering and enlarging their world. [Ski for Life’s] motto “If I can do this, I can do anything” is absolutely right. So today I just want to present to you five brief stories, five story lines that struck me, about sports and recreation for the blind, as I was researching writing this book.

Five reasons why there are so many opportunities today and why it is so important. So the first one is – number one: “Suddenly, the world of sports for the blind and visually impaired has become very, very wide.” And I digressed a little bit here. I was third in the Boston Marathon Visually Impaired Division in 1997, I ran under three hours, yet that time they suggested I shoot for the Paralympics. I had no idea what they were talking about and I probably would have been offended. But we know today that Paralympians are invited to the White House too, along with our Olympic athletes. It's a new world, with the expectation that blind and visually impaired people will be accommodated, and it's an industry and an infrastructure of people and programs that are waiting to have you participate.

This has come about due to many factors. The Americans with Disability Act of 1990 began to pave the way in this process by making public recreation facilities accessible to all people. And this helps on the rapid growth of the Paralympic and the disability movements. The Paralympics gaining parity with the Olympics in terms of the prestige. In 1996 other programs, such as the Wounded Warriors Sports Project, which was started to help wounded veterans at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raised a great deal of awareness on the importance of sports and recreation for living a full life and people who are blind or visually impaired are usually invited to participate in these kinds of events, as well as other ones, for other disabilities too. And more recently, in going forward, the US Department of Education recently added Title 9 type guidelines to the Rehabilitation Act, mandating that all students with disabilities have access to sports and fitness programs in their schools.

Adaptive sports are part of our culture, most ski areas offer year-round programs of skiing and snowboarding in the winter and kayaking and tent and biking and similar sports in the summer. And recreation providers offer accessible programs. Today, a blind person could be scuba diving in Cozumel, compete in road-races that award prize money, ski down a black diamond trail, kayak white water and even fly a plane. All of these things combine to create a new perspective. Blind people now expect to have access to sports and if one sport is not available, it won't be long before someone or some organization solves that problem. The suddenness of this problem has made people, including professionals in the blindness field unaware of what is out there. So today, being inactive is not for a lack of options. That's kind of the first one.

Number two “In sports, more often than not, the eye dives, but the body does the work.” As sport and recreation opportunities expand, for persons who are blind, so do the realization about the exact role of the sight plays in sports. What the actual limitations are and why the barriers are quickly coming down. We all know how sports such as bowling, judo, running, wrestling, swimming, etcetera require no or minimum modifications for blind people. But isn't sight essential if not a matter of life or death for shooting a rifle or bow, driving a race car, skiing downhill, or reading gauges while scuba diving? I believe no. The skiing itself is more about technique and developing muscle memory. No one skies with their eyes. Now I don't want to sound frivolous here but safety and obstacle avoidance is crucial for all skiers. But the needs for this you got from other sources. Most of what you do is done with your muscles.

It's the same thing with archery where the ability to set a target seems paramount, more than half the battle. You do have to sight a target, but winning a tournament depends on stance, strength and stamina. You have to be able to shoot 36 arrows with the same level of consistency. So after the target is sighted, it really comes down to the kind of act that you are and your ability to concentrate and to put that arrow near the same place each time.

Keep your eye on the ball belies your bodies a more significant role in executing the action. In many sports, the focus is shifting away the fear of or the need for protection from inevitable catastrophe to isolating the exact accommodations needed to be produced or transformed, what we need the eyes for. If you approach it from that angle, many sports look a lot more manageable.

Number three “Though we participate far less, blind people often derive far more benefits from sports than our sighted peers.” Here's one reason sports are important and should be accessible to all. Everyone knows sports teach citizenship among others. But for blind people, sports do more. It can help build levels of confidence from increasing mobility and spatial awareness that most people get through vision and never have to think about. Fencing for example can reinforce good cane technique, increase spatial awareness and provide a disciplined system that reduces the fear of exploring the world around you.

A program such as Tennis Serves, which takes place in Massachusetts delivers two simple esteem stacking commodities. A place where one could run around safely and one-on-one interaction with sighted peers, who tutor them. Ski for Life has in a week transformed terror and feelings of futility, into a life changing victory of control and possibility for many first time cross-country skiers. Some blind people never knew they had any competitiveness in them at all, until they made their first tandem bike ride as an adult.

I dedicated the book to Arthur O'Neil, from the Care Center for the Blind. He developed their Outdoor Emission Program, and I remember telling me, when he first began teaching people how to sail, as soon as his first group learned how to sail and they heard that there was competition, they all clambered to do it, they wanted to do that right away, so that being people who are blind, who may not have the outlets for it, they want to be in sports and they take opportunities like that, and I think people don't really realize that much.

Jim Elliot, the founder of Dive Heart told me that the videos that disabled divers take home with them from their training and their trips and share with their family and friends, often give him an whole new outlook. It's no longer Johnny the blind kid, but Johnny the scuba-diver. And I think that transform in the potential seems as it would be higher in a person who is blind or visually impaired, than for somebody who is not disable. I could be wrong but... In addition people now know that sports and recreation and exercise are vital components for living a full life. They relieve stress, increase health and help build identity, things what most people want and must seek to make sports an ongoing part of their lives. Which blind people now can do.

Number four - “Know what you want to try, ask for it and be ever vigilant about what even advocates tell you.” The most important thing when it comes to sports is what interests you, what speaks to you. What sports or activities have you done? What would you like to try? It starts there. The main difference in being blind then, versus 30 years ago is that back then blind people couldn't play a Little League, for example. You weren't expected to want to, and if you did, you were expected to satisfy that desire by reading about baseball rather than playing it. You'd be the score keeper, or ironically the referee during gym-class games. I've heard this from many blind people and I loved it, it's just strange.

It happened to me when I was in sixth grade. We had a big class-wide softball game and I used my visual impairment to beg out of it, which they were more than willing to do, but they were so compassionate they made me the out-field umpire which was just one of those wonderful things that shows the two sides of the people. People at their most generous and people at their most myopic or maybe stupid, even. Today you can play, so ask, and if there's no program near you, someone will be glad to help you find a way that may guide you to a program, or guide you in an activity. For example, take you out in a kayak or to a shooting range where you can experience what a gun feels like. People's interest in an energy for facilitating problem solving runs far higher unfortunately, than the thrive for most blind people to participate. I'm not asking people to place a trail, just letting you know of the many people who are eager to help put you on the path.

Larry Muffet

Let's see if we have some questions from those of you who are listening and if you have a question, go ahead and press the control key. Okay, I see we have a question over there so I'm going to turn the microphone.

John

Hello, this is John from Maine. I'm 63 years old and I have had people telling me that I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing, which is mowing my own yard, weed whacking, shoveling dog crap and anything that's in a normal life for anybody. And I'm wondering why people keep telling me I shouldn't do .

Andrew Leibs

Well I imagine that is from some kind of a misplaced kindness but I know what you mean. People never let you do anything. Whenever, wherever I walked some place, if I walked a mile home and I told somebody that, they looked at me as if I were insane. “You walked? Why didn't you call me? Next time call me.” And then, the next time you call they go “I can't really do it now.” But I think that people are just looking out for you, but there's nothing wrong with any of these activities in terms of health at all. With exercise, I guess the only danger in shoveling snow is that it's a type of task that you keep doing until it's done which is why it sometimes causes heart attacks, because you don't stop when you feel something, you keep going until the driveway is clear. But other than that, I think people just don't know what to do.

Larry Muffet

Candace, if you had a question, go ahead with it.

Man

I've got a question for you, Andrew. It's about the training and how long it took you to be ready to run a marathon.

Andrew Leibs

That's a great question. Running a marathon, it's one of those things that always astounds people, they say things like “I can't run around the block,” but it's very odd. Wanting and training for a marathon takes less running than you think. I did my first one in the summer of 1986, actually I did the marathon in the fall and a friend helped train me by giving me things to run. I probably averaged around 10 miles a day. But I know people who average 7-8 miles a day who would run every so often and were able to do it just fine.

A marathon is just one of these things where you just start off slowly, you get a little bit slower basically. But for me, what came with my first marathon that astounded me was training for it, and the kind of shape that I got into. I'll just tell you this little thing here. In March of that year I ran my first road-race of the year, which was a five-mile run and I thought, for some reason, that I was going to break 30 minutes. I ran fast my first mile, then I died and I crawled in after about 34 minutes, I've never felt worse in my life and as I trained throughout the year, my five-mile time, the first five-miles of a ten-mile run just got faster and faster.

And when I ran that marathon that morning in Portland May, I went out so slowly, so worried about how tired I would be and I was just jogging along at what I thought was such a leisurely pace and when I went through the five miles there was a clock and it read exactly 30 minutes. I could not believe how easily and simple I was able to run five miles then. And throughout the race it just seemed to get better and one of the benefits of a marathon is you'll experience some of the feeling of running you've never had, somewhere between 8 and 12 miles.

So marathons are great, I think they're much more doable and I think one of the biggest benefits of it is it really helps you to see and solve other problems in your life. Because you understand that, like the ski for blind motto “You can do that, you can do anything.” So a good question to ask is “Are you giving your life enough challenges to let your body and mind and subconscious solve things?”

Larry Muffet

Speaking of that sort of challenges, have you done sky-diving yet?

Andrew Leibs

No, but it's one of those things that I have always wanted to do. And there are some blind people here in New Hampshire who did this last year and I was fascinated about it and it's one of those things I want to do because it terrifies me but it also sounds like an incredible experience. And someone who did it told me that for her, the most difficult thing, the only hard thing was, they did the training at about eight or nine in the morning and she had to wait for the last person to sky-dive at 4:30 in the afternoon so the waiting time to do it was just the most difficult part.