[Sportsandrec] FW: [nfbsc] A twist on tennis allows the blindtoplay

Sun Jul 8 06:15:56 UTC 2012

The Tennessee Association of Blind Athletes is working on bring this program 
to Tennessee. I think it is great.

Ricky Jones

Tennessee Association of Blind Athletes
1081 Zophi Street, Nashville TN 37216
Email:      tnaba at bellsouth.net
Phone:     615-390-4178
Web:        www.tnaba.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
To: "Sports and Recreation for the Blind Discussion List" 
<sportsandrec at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2012 10:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Sportsandrec] FW: [nfbsc] A twist on tennis allows the 
blindtoplay

> with so many changes, it really doesn't sound like tennis
>
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Eric Calhoun
> Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2012 8:41 PM
> To: sportsandrec at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [Sportsandrec] FW: [nfbsc] A twist on tennis allows the blind 
> toplay
>
>
>
> Original Message:
> From: Vicki Phillips <xpirate412 at gmail.com>
> To: <nfbsc at yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [nfbsc] A twist on tennis allows the blind to play
> Date:
> Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:06:37 -0400
>
> A twist on tennis allows the blind to play
> By Laura Shin | June 11, 2012, 4:14 AM PDT
>
> Tennis for the blind seems like a fantastical notion. After all, when
> Sighted people have a hard enough time making contact with a little ball
> that's whizzing through the air, how could a blind person be expected to
> do
> so without the benefit of sight?
> But a new kind of tennis ball filled with ball bearings that rattle every
> time it hits the ground or a racket is making it possible for the blind to
> play.
> The origins of blind tennis
> Blind tennis originated in Japan in 1984 with a blind high school student
> named Miyoshi Takei.
> According to The New York Times, His widow, Etsuko, who is also blind,
> said
> he saw the court in his mind and he knew where he was standing, where the
> ball was flying and bouncing. By listening, she said, he could control the
> ball very well. (Takei died last year at 42 when he fell in front of a
> train.) Japan now has about 300 players who compete in tournaments, and
> the
> sport is also played in China, South Korea, Taiwan, Britain and Russia.
> American high school student Sejal Vallabh, who is sighted, learned of the
> game while on an internship in Japan. The 17-year-old native of Newton,
> Mass., founded a volunteer organization called Tennis Serves that is
> starting to introduce blind tennis to the U.S., where about 1.8 million
> Americans over 15 have severe difficulty seeing, according to the Census
> Bureau.
> Tennis Serves has brought the game to the Perkins School for the Blind in
> Watertown, Mass., Lighthouse International in New York and the California
> School for the Blind in Fremont. Vallabh hopes to someday hold a national
> tournament and to have blind tennisrecognized as an official sport at the
> Paralympics. She is also working with an engineering class at  Harvey Mudd
> College to design a ball that emits a continuous sound, so players can
> hear
> the ball as it travels through the air, even before it bounces.
> How blind tennis differs from sighted tennis
> The ball is larger than a regular tennis ball and made of foam that
> encases
> a plastic shell holding the ball bearings. (You can hear the sound it
> makes
> in the video below.)
> The game is also played on a smaller court with a badminton net lowered
> to
> the ground, with junior rackets with oversize heads and string taped
> along
> the lines. Players with some sight get two bounces, the completely blind
> get
> three, the Times says.
> How the mind adapts to play blind tennis
> One of the key adaptations of blind people is their ability to localize
> sound.
> In the blind, the human brain seems to use the area usually devoted to
> vision, the occipital cortex, to instead process sound and touch in order
> to
> help them see what is around them.
> For instance, studies show that when blind subjects read Braille, their
> visual cortex activates, and that, in sighted people who are blindfolded,
> the visual cortex begins to process sound and touch within five days.
> So, when it comes to blind tennis, the players ability to localize sound
> is
> key to their ability to find and make contact with the ball. The Times
> quotes William R. Wiener, an expert on orientation and mobility for the
> blind, who is dean of graduate studies at the University of North
> Carolina,
> Greensboro, on the importance of sound localization to the blind:
> Listening
> To the ball, locating where it is and swinging at it probably helps you
> with
> the sport and also with your mobility.
> Still, it takes a few years for totally blind players to be able to play
> a
> match of blind tennis, according to Ayako Matsui, former secretary
> general
> of the Japan Blind Tennis Federation.
> But sound localization isnt the only sound processing skill that enables
> blind players to see. Some of the blind use echolocation to navigate the
> world  in other words, they use palatal clicks or hand claps to see
> objects
> around them the way bats use sonar. For  instance, Daniel Kish, who lost
> his
> sight as a baby, uses echolocation to hike along cliff edges and ride  a
> mountain bike.
>
> LINK: Watch the video below to see a blind tennis tournament.
> http://www.youtube.com/v/6ZELzVCvaHI?version=3&hl=en_US
>
> SOURCE
> http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/a-twist-on-tennis-allows-the-b
>
> lind-to-play/12904
> -- 
> Please note: All articles posted to this list are copyright of their
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