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First time watching goalball with my deteriorating eyesight
He loved baseball from an early age and devoted himself to the sport, dreaming of playing at Koshien, but when he was in his third year of junior high school, he developed an incurable disease called Leber’s disease, and his eyesight began to deteriorate rapidly.
“I was depressed when I couldn’t continue playing baseball. But about six months later, at the recommendation of my parents and the doctor at the hospital, I went to watch a goalball game. And then…”
I was surprised when I saw goalball for the first time.
“How can you move like this without being able to see at all? What is this?” I immediately tried it out and broke out in a sweat for the first time in six months.
“It felt great. It was like love at first sight, and I was hooked!”
The participants compete to score points by rolling a ball weighing about 1 kilogram with a bell inside and putting it in the goal. Regardless of the level of visual impairment, all participants wear eye masks and rely on sound to stop the ball by throwing their whole bodies into the game. I was fascinated by their dynamic movements and sense of speed.
I was happy to betray my preconceptions
At first, there was resistance to sports for people with disabilities.
“Baseball was everything to me in terms of sports. I just assumed that people with disabilities had no connection to sports.”
However, goalball has completely changed that perception.
“I was pleasantly surprised! It was so cool! The movements and the appearance were so cool, it was just so cool as a sport! It’s amazing what human potential is. It doesn’t matter if you have a disability or not!”
A sports experience that breaks the loneliness of darkness
When asked about the appeal of goalball, he replied, “Someone called it the ‘silent martial art,’ but to me it’s a ‘ball game without eyesight.'”
It is said that 80% of the information people receive in their daily lives is through vision, and by shutting down that vision, it is possible to experience sensations that cannot normally be felt.
“It’s rare in sports, but players collide with each other. The more absorbed they are in the game, the more likely they are to collide. If they could see, they could stop just in time, but because they can’t see, they end up colliding with each other.”
That’s why non-visual communication is important.
“The players can’t make eye contact, and they basically stay silent so they can concentrate on the sound of the bell. Even among teammates, it can feel very lonely in the dark if they can’t speak. But if even one person says, ‘It’s on the right,’ and the other person replies, ‘OK,’ it conveys the feeling that everyone is looking to the right.”
This new sporting experience that transcends eyesight may also be one of the attractions of goalball.
Source: Japan