[nabs-l] Charlie Wilks- blind football player. (as featured on ESPN 360)

[Darian Smith]

Hello,
 I just heard this story and came across it on the internet.  I don't
know how you may take  to it,   , but I thought it would be
interesting to  post it  and  see where  we go with it.
 Thanks,
   Darian

 sited source:  http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/e60/columns/story?id=4637537



When I first came across Charlie Wilks' story I did a double take. A
blind football player? Really?

Close your eyes.

Count to 10.

Open your eyes.

Imagine every second, every minute, every day of your life is visually blank.

Charlie Wilks is 100 percent blind. He can sense only extreme light.
He is a smart, witty 14-year-old kid who even finds time to tell blind
jokes.

At age 5, a brain tumor crushed Charlie's optical nerve and stole his
eyesight. After multiple surgeries, Charlie was completely blind by
age 6. He saw
football on television before he went blind and heard plenty of
stories from his grandfather, Al Reynolds, who played in Super Bowl I
for the
Kansas City Chiefs.

"E:60" on ESPN

Watch this story on "
E:60
" at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.

After meeting Charlie and his mother, several family members and folks
from Emporia, Kan., I knew I had discovered a special story. Charlie
has a perfect
television personality. He is vibrant, intelligent and funny. He is
dramatic and compelling. Most of all, Charlie Wilks is real.

I had a radical thought. I wanted Charlie to be the "E:60" reporter
for his own life story. Charlie liked the idea and executed the
concept flawlessly.
Management gave me the green light. And I just might have found the
next Jeremy Schaap.

Charlie Wilks has a fascinating story that raises lots of questions.
Here are some of those questions and their answers.

When I tell people about your story, there's one question that is
always asked &

How do I do it?

Yes. How do you do it? Can you describe how you play football?

I run forward, and I run into people. Basically that's it. I play
football with my team, and they give me cues. We just work together. I
play football with
the four senses I have left to me; I listen mostly, it's just
listening. I feel where the other guys are, and it's not like reaching
out and touching them.
I don't do that. I just have a sense of where they are by where I am
positioned.

Describe what you hear on the football field.

[+] Enlarge Charlie Wilks

E:60Charlie Wilks during an ESPN's "E:60" shoot in January 2009 at
Emporia State University.

Well, I'm listening to the quarterback say the down, set, hike and
then the middle linebacker, which he's like lined up right behind me,
and he'll yell
"Go" when the ball is snapped. And then I'll run forward and try to
break up the play. Sometimes I'll help my team out by listening in on
the other team's
conversations in their huddles.

So you steal plays?

Yeah, pretty much. I tell them what's going to happen, and then we stop them.

How are you able to do that?

I listen.

How do you know who to tackle?

I don't. Basically the center is just pretty much in front of me, and
there have been times when I've tackled my own teammates on accident.
The center pretty
much, his position is right across from me, so I run forward or I can
run to the right or the left to try and bust through. And just wreck
the play as
much as I can. But basically my only job is to hit the center, drag
them back, make an opening and give somebody else a chance to get in
there to stop
the play. Or, I can stop it myself.

How were you able to pick up football so easily?

It wasn't any different than what the other guys did, I listened and
learned -- and then, just experience.

Can you sense people around you and what's happening in the play?

[+] Enlarge Charlie Wilks with Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Dwayne Bowe

E:60Charlie Wilks with Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Dwayne Bowe
before the Cowboys-Chiefs game on Oct. 11. Bowe caught a touchdown in
the fourth quarter
and gave Charlie the ball.

Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes I do have a heightened sense of awareness
of the people around me, but it depends on the day. If we're playing
in rain, that's
the hardest time for me to play football because I can't hear
anything. The water that's hitting my helmet just drowns everything
out. If it's raining,
we will have the middle linebacker run up, and he'll smack me on the
leg to let me know that the ball has been snapped, and then I'll run
forward.

Your grandfather Al Reynolds [Chiefs offensive lineman from 1960 to
'68], along with many other all-time great Chiefs players, was honored
at halftime of
the
Dallas Cowboys
-Kansas City Chiefs game Oct. 11. The Chiefs invited you to be there
with him and experience that moment. What was that like?

It was pretty cool. I liked meeting
Dwayne Bowe
 and
Glenn Dorsey
, 'cause they have had the experience and they gave me some good
advice about football. But not just football, but to tell me to keep
going with what I
am doing. They said I inspire a lot of people out there. I think that
it's cool that I inspire them. If it weren't for them [Bowe and
Dorsey], I wouldn't
have the motivation I needed to continue playing football, so I guess
it's a two-way thing.

What do you want people to remember about you after this story?

I want people to remember that disabilities aren't things that get in
your way. If you use them right, disabilities can be your greatest
ability. It's like
if you imagine a disability as a crutch, don't use the disability as a
crutch, you should use the disability as a leg and start running.

Charlie Wilks
E:60Charlie Wilks reports his own story about what it's like to be
blind and play football.

Ben Houser is a senior producer for "E:60." Charlie Wilks is a
freshman football player in Emporia, Kan. When asked what was the
experience was like as
an ESPN reporter -- asking family and friends about himself -- Wilks
said: "I thought it was cool to ask my family about this stuff. It is
usually not
something that I would talk about, and I enjoyed learning what they
thought about me."


-- 
"And if you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny
calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching
before us;
if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our
slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we owe
past and future generations,
then I'm ready to take up the cause, and march with you, and work with
you. Together, starting today, let us finish the work that needs to be
done, and
usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth."- Baraq Obama