Most of you know Seth and I were both swimmers in high school and college. This is a really great and inspirational story I was so excited to read!! Seth and I have talked about Oliana swimming, but we weren't sure how she would do it, the flip turns, diving, ect... This just proves that she really can do it!! This young man has basically the same condition Oli has. I just love reading about blind kids doing "normal" (hate that word too) sports that other kids enjoy. Oli loves the water and can already blow bubbles and put her face in and hold her breath. Too long sometimes, I have to pull her head up! This story is inspirational for me especially because he talks about how he has to push himself and doesn't let his blindness keep him from exploring the world. He doesn't use it as an excuse to feel sorry for himself. I find it particularly interesting that he went to a blind school first and then public school. He said that helped pull him out of his comfort zone. This is what we hope for Oli. We want her to go to a blind school first and then integrate to public school so she is not only around blind peers. She learns as much from sighted people as they learn from her. Hope you all find this as inspirational and as exciting as I do.!!!
Here is a great news story from Chester, Pennsylvania about a high school senior named Matt Wallace, who has bilateral anophthalmia.
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2009/02/11/news/doc4992db780983f279507622.txt
Bonner senior is a vision of inspiration
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 10:28 AM EST
By JOHN LOHN jlohn@...
CHESTER — With each stroke, the cheers grew louder and the applause inside the Widener University Natatorium became more sustained. It’s a familiar scene for Matt Wallace, a Monsignor Bonner senior. During Friars meets, he’s everyone’s favorite swimmer.Wallace isn’t a record-setter. His path from wall to wall isn’t always straight, crooked swimming a normal occurrence for the 17-year-old. In last week’s meet against La Salle, Wallace finished well behind the competition. Really, who cares?Of the thousands of scholastic athletes in Delaware County, Wallace might be the most inspirational. Born without eyes, a condition known as bilateral anophthalmia, Wallace swims in the dark. He can’t see his competition. He must be notified when to turn. Sometimes, he gets out of the water with skinned and cut hands, the result of unforgiving collisions with the lane lines.Guess what? He’s having a blast. Swimming has been Wallace’s motivational tool and a foundation for his shift from an insular environment to the real world.“Before I got to Bonner, I was in a cocoon,” he said. “I didn’t really have a concept of the real world and that’s what I’ve been shown.”It’s 40 minutes before Bonner faces La Salle in a home meet at Widener. The Friars are completing their warmup and Wallace is moving through his set in Lane 1. Nothing seems unusual. He has a good-looking stroke, better than a number of his teammates. It’s smooth, not choppy. But as Wallace approaches the wall, preparing to turn, he stands out.Nathan Stuhltrager, the 9-year-old son of coach Stephen Stuhltrager, stands at the end of Wallace’s lane, holding a five-foot long piece of PVC pipe. The end is covered in foam, and it’s this part that taps Wallace on the head or shoulder, indicating it’s time to turn. Upon contact, Wallace starts to somersault, pushes off the wall and begins his next 25-yard journey. The younger Stuhltrager, holding the creation of assistant coach Mike McDevitt, heads to the other end of the pool, ready to perform his duty a second time.For the Bonner swim team, it’s just another day.In his 13th year coaching Bonner, Stephen Stuhltrager wasn’t sure what to expect the first time Wallace wandered onto the deck. He didn’t know how he could tend to a team with 30 members, including a blind freshman. Three years later, nothing surprises him. Most important, he loves the message that Wallace sends by simply completing a race.“As a coach, my first thought was making sure we would have a safe environment,” Stuhltrager said. “A half-hour into the first practice, he was all over the lane and there was mass chaos. We had to make sure he had room, so we dedicated a lane to Matt. It’s really worked out great. The kids love him and I’ve never heard him complain about anything. He’s improved so much from his freshman year, but more than that, he’s a real inspiration.”Competing for the Overbrook School for the Blind as an eighth-grader, Wallace arrived at Bonner confident in his ability to immediately contribute. He quickly learned that Catholic League swimming and the practice demands were incomparable to what he knew at Overbrook. Still, he forged ahead and scored for the Friars in a meet earlier this season against Archbishop Carroll.While completing flip turns was a victory as a freshman, Wallace has started to dive on his starts this year. Previously, he would hop in the water before a race and simply push off the wall at the sound of the start. If he has one regret, it’s his decision to skip his junior season.“When I first jumped in the water for Bonner, I was cocky,” said Wallace, whose condition develops in the first month of pregnancy and affects about one in 100,000 babies. “At Overbrook, I was one of the better swimmers and I thought it would be the same here. Halfway through the first practice, I was hurting so bad. I called coach and told him I didn’t think it was going to work out. He convinced me not to bail out.“This has been a great experience. After that initial letdown, when I saw how much better this was than Overbrook, I decided to use it as a learning experience. Failure can lead to success. I’ve surpassed all of my goals. I’m faster than I’ve ever been. I wish I hadn’t taken last year off. That was a big mistake. I was just being lazy.”Against La Salle, Wallace far from dogged it. He contested the 200 freestyle and 100 free on an individual basis and was a member of Bonner’s 200 and 400 freestyle relays. He handled that workload in about 45 minutes. Preparing for those races, he gets plenty of help from his teammates.Before Wallace is required to report to the blocks, a Bonner swimmer finds him on the deck and escorts him to his lane. Once he climbs out of the pool, another teammate brings him back to the Bonner area of the deck.“This year’s team has been phenomenal,” said Lucy Wallace, Matt’s mother. “The atmosphere has been great. He really feels accepted.”For most of the day, Wallace wears prosthetic eyes. When he attends swim practice or a meet, he removes them, to ensure he doesn’t lose one. That lesson was learned the hard way. The only other time he isn’t wearing the prosthetics is while he sleeps.Aside from swimming, Wallace has been involved with the Blind Sports Organization, based out of Philadelphia, since he was a 6-year-old. He’s regularly played “goal ball” and “beep baseball” and his passion for sports is evident in his addiction to ESPN’s SportsCenter. He’s even dabbled in water polo, albeit in a special practice set up by Stuhltrager.So his athletes could understand what Wallace deals with on a daily basis, Stuhltrager had the Friars place duct tape over their goggles. What ensued was a water polo game in which Wallace was dominant, scoring once and assisting on the only other goal tallied. Meanwhile, the rest of the Friars were at a sensory loss, one swimmer continuing to wade through the water five minutes after play concluded, unaware the game was over.“You have a real appreciation of what he deals with every day,” said Jeremy McDevitt, a junior and Bonner’s top swimmer. “We just get in and swim. He has so much to overcome. Before I got here, I heard stories about him. Then you see him pushing himself in person and it’s unbelievable. It’s so motivating. He’s a hero to the team.”Before enrolling at Monsignor Bonner, Wallace attended only schools for the visually impaired. He spent kindergarten through sixth grade at St. Lucy’s Day School for Children with Visual Impairment and moved to Overbook School for the Blind for seventh and eighth grade. It was during his middle-school years that Lucy and Jim, Matt’s father, decided their son needed to enter a regular learning environment.“He wasn’t too happy about going to Bonner because he had found a comfort zone,” Lucy Wallace said. “But we knew he needed Bonner and as he’s grown up and matured, he’s seeing that, too. At Overbrook, everything was done for him. He has to work at Bonner. Nothing is handed to him. When he goes to college, we know Bonner will have him prepared.”Since Wallace resides in Marple Township, the Marple Newtown School District has played a key role in his education at Bonner. It provides him with a Braille Note, a computer in which Wallace keeps his homework, e-mail and assignments. The district also has provided him with a vision teacher, Jeanne Aaron. Among her duties are turning upcoming tests into Braille.Wallace’s class load isn’t exactly easy. A strong student, he’s taking Advanced Placement English and is an Honors student in his other subjects. He’s also been busy with extracurricular activities, serving stints with the newspaper and yearbook. His favorite duty, however, is his involvement with the morning announcements.Before Wallace leaves for school, he turns on ESPN or listens to XM Satellite Radio and familiarizes himself with the results of the previous night’s games, particularly those of Philadelphia’s sports teams. Wallace then goes on school television and updates his classmates on the latest news.“I needed that development and to be surrounded by kids who didn’t have the same disability,” he said about attending Bonner. “I was kind of childish. It took some time, but I’ve grown up.“And Overbrook wasn’t good for me academically. I needed to go to a place where I was going to be pushed in class. There was definitely a transition period, getting used to the tougher classes and fitting in socially.”A devoted fan of Ohio State sports, Wallace will have to buy some Cherry and White apparel next year, when he begins life as a Temple University student. Wallace plans to major in journalism, with the hope that a career awaits either as a television/radio sports commentator or as a sports writer.Think a career in sports journalism is impossible? Think again. Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News has covered the Cincinnati Reds for nearly 30 years. Since 2003, he’s been legally blind, the result of multiple strokes. And legendary Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray continued to write despite losing sight in his right eye to a cataract and sight in his left eye to a detached retina.While Wallace has no vision, it has not hindered his dreams. If journalism doesn’t end up in the cards, perhaps a career in comedy is an option.“Maybe I can’t do play-by-play, but I could be an analyst,” said Wallace, who also considered West Chester University. “Donovan McNabb and the Eagles aren’t going to win a Super Bowl any time soon. How hard was that? The reality is that I’m going to have to work a lot harder than most to get what I want. But I believe I can get over the barriers in front of me.”The day Matt Wallace joined the Bonner swim team, he wasn’t looking to be a motivational figure. That’s just how his high school career has worked out. Wallace’s story has been an anything-is-possible tale — for his teammates, competitors, coaches. Faced with a disability, he has found a way to overcome and get the most out of his high school days.All the while, Wallace hasn’t felt sorry for himself.“There are times when I wish I could see,” he said. “It would be nice if I could drive, but it’s not something I’m going to dwell on. There’s no point in doing that. The things I can do, I try to do them as best I can. With swimming, it’s a great sport for exercise and staying in shape. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it and the bonding with my teammates. I’m going to miss this.”His inspirational story will carry on.John Lohn is the Deputy Sports Editor of the Daily Times
It’s Great to be 8!!
6 years ago
