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<DIV><SPAN class=940061714-12062012><FONT color=#0000ff size=2
face=Arial>Finally, the one sport I have wanted an adaptation
for.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=940061714-12062012><FONT color=#0000ff size=2
face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=940061714-12062012><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial>Cindy
Sheets</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr lang=en-us class=OutlookMessageHeader align=left><FONT size=2
face=Tahoma>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B>
nfb-indiana@yahoogroups.com [mailto:nfb-indiana@yahoogroups.com] <B>On Behalf Of
</B>Susan Jones<BR><B>Sent:</B> Monday, June 11, 2012 9:11 PM<BR><B>To:</B>
nfb-indiana@yahoogroups.com; nfb-indy@yahoogroups.com<BR><B>Subject:</B>
[nfb-indiana] TENNIS FOR THE BLIND<BR><BR></FONT></DIV><SPAN
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<P>I got this article from another listserv; thought it was interesting
enough<BR>to post here.<BR><BR>Susan<BR><BR>A Game of Tennis Tests Notions of
Blindness - NYTimes.com The New York Times<BR>June 4, 2012<BR><BR>Hitting the
Court, With an Ear on the Ball By THOMAS LIN<BR><BR>WATERTOWN, Mass. - Dan
Guilbeault was 3 when doctors discovered a tumor<BR>called an optic glioma
pressed against his optic nerves. He continued to<BR>play the sports he loved -
basketball, baseball and football - until he lost<BR>most of his sight at
11.<BR><BR>Now he is 19 and almost completely blind, and his favorite sport is
tennis.<BR><BR>When he first heard about tennis for the visually impaired, his
reaction was<BR>"No way!" he said. "I was skeptical."<BR><BR>So were faculty
members at the<BR>Perkins School for the Blind<BR>here, when a sighted student
from nearby Newton proposed it nearly two years<BR>ago. But Perkins, known for
athletic innovations like adapted fencing,<BR>decided to offer what are believed
to be the first blind tennis classes in<BR>the country.<BR><BR>Like tennis for
sighted people, the game requires speedy court coverage and<BR>precise
shot-making. Blind players rely on their ears to follow a foam ball<BR>filled
with ball bearings that rattles when it bounces or is struck.<BR><BR>"Your ears
have become your eyes," said Dr. Robert Gotlin, director of<BR>orthopedic and
sports rehabilitation at Beth Israel Medical Center in New<BR>York
City.<BR><BR>Sejal Vallabh, a 17-year-old high school junior in Newton,
encountered the<BR>sport during a summer internship in Tokyo and then proposed
the program at<BR>Perkins.<BR>She set up a volunteer organization,<BR>Tennis
Serves<BR>, which introduced the sport last year at Lighthouse International in
New<BR>York and the California School for the Blind in Fremont.<BR><BR>As blind
tennis grows in the United States, where the Census Bureau<BR>estimates that 1.8
million people over 15 have "severe difficulty seeing,"<BR>it is testing popular
notions of the limitations of blindness.<BR><BR>"I want to show that it is
possible for blind athletes to play tennis,"<BR>Ms. Vallabh said. No one
believes it, she said, "until they see it for<BR>themselves."<BR><BR>The most
important adaptation is the ball, which is larger and made of foam,<BR>wrapped
around a plastic shell that holds the ball bearings.<BR><BR>"It sounds like
bells ringing," said Emmanuel Ford, 10, who has cerebral<BR>palsy and is
learning to hit tennis balls at Lighthouse.<BR><BR>Other adaptations include a
smaller court with a badminton net lowered to<BR>the ground, string taped along
the lines and junior rackets with oversize<BR>heads.<BR>Players with some sight
get two bounces, the completely blind three.<BR>Only one set is played, and an
umpire calls the lines.<BR><BR>The first sound-adapted tennis ball was designed
in 1984 by Miyoshi Takei ,<BR>a blind high school student in Japan. Now, about
300 players compete in<BR>tournaments there; blind tennis is also played in
China, South Korea,<BR>Taiwan, Britain and Russia.<BR><BR>During matches<BR>,
Mr. Takei, a 16-time national champion who worked as a massage therapist<BR>for
older people, mostly hit flat, aggressive strokes, but lobbed the ball<BR>on
defense to regain court position. Sometimes he lunged or dived for shots.<BR>(He
died last year, at 42, after falling in front of a train.)<BR><BR>His widow,
Etsuko, who is also blind, said he saw the "court in his mind and<BR>he knew
where he was standing, where the ball was flying and bouncing." By<BR>listening,
she said, "he could control the ball very well."<BR><BR>An expert on orientation
and mobility for the blind, William R. Wiener, dean<BR>of graduate studies at
the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, said<BR>that sound localization
"is so important when blind people navigate the<BR>world," and added, "Listening
to the ball, locating where it is and swinging<BR>at it probably helps you with
the sport and also with your mobility."<BR><BR>Blind tennis is made possible,
scientists say, by the adaptability of the<BR>human brain - which appears to
repurpose its visual area, the occipital<BR>cortex, to process sound and touch
in response to blindness.<BR><BR>A series of studies discovered activity in the
visual cortex when blind test<BR>subjects read Braille, and found that a blind
woman could no longer make<BR>sense of the raised dots after suffering an
occipital stroke . Another<BR>study, of sighted subjects who were blindfolded,
showed that the occipital<BR>cortex began processing tactile and auditory
information within five days.<BR><BR>"How it works is not a mystery," said
Melvyn A. Goodale, director of the<BR><BR>Brain and Mind Institute<BR>at the
University of Western Ontario. "We know that it is possible to<BR>localize
sounds, and it is likely that the blind get better at this than<BR>sighted
people."<BR><BR>Dr. Goodale and his colleagues are studying how echo processing
works in the<BR>occipital cortex of blind echolocation experts like Daniel Kish
, who as a<BR>baby lost his sight to retinoblastoma . Human echolocators use
palatal<BR>clicks or hand claps to "see" objects around them, like sonar in
bats, only<BR>bats use ultrasonic frequencies that can resolve flying insects.
This skill<BR>allows Mr. Kish to hike along cliff edges and ride a mountain
bike.<BR><BR>While humans don't have the auditory resolution to echolocate a
moving<BR>tennis ball, blind tennis "promotes freedom of movement," said Mr.
Kish,<BR>president of World Access for the Blind , a nonprofit group that has
taught<BR>echolocation and other mobility skills to hundreds around the world.
"Most<BR>blind kids just don't get early experience interacting with
flying<BR>projectiles."<BR><BR>Kiran Prasad, 20, a Columbia University junior
and Tennis Serves coordinator<BR>at Lighthouse, said: "They're living in a world
that's built for sighted<BR>people.<BR>I can only hope that tennis is giving
them that confidence to feel like you<BR>can do anything."<BR><BR>Ms. Vallabh,
the young founder of Tennis Serves, hopes to someday host a<BR>national
tournament and to have blind tennis recognized as an official sport<BR>at the
Paralympics.<BR><BR>But first the sport has to catch on, and it takes a few
years for totally<BR>blind players to become proficient enough to play a match,
said Ayako<BR>Matsui, former secretary general of the Japan Blind Tennis
Federation. And<BR>it is still met with skepticism. The Washington State School
for the Blind<BR>rejected Ms. Vallabh's pitch, said Jennifer Butcher, a fitness
instructor<BR>there. "But if a student expresses interest in learning tennis, we
could try<BR>it down the road," she said.<BR><BR>Meanwhile, Ms. Vallabh is
working to improve the sport, partnering with an<BR>engineering class at Harvey
Mudd College to design a ball that emits a<BR>continuous sound, so players can
hear its trajectory before it bounces.<BR><BR>At Perkins, a sound-adapted tennis
ball sits on the desk of the school<BR>president, Steven M. Rothstein,
symbolizing possibility.<BR><BR>"Sometimes you don't know until you try it,"
said Matt LaCortiglia, the<BR>adapted physical education coordinator at Perkins.
"Now we're doing a lot<BR>more tennis."<BR><BR></P></DIV><!--~-|**|PrettyHtmlStart|**|-~-->
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