SHARING THE VISION

PALMER — Mindy Baldwin clings to a wall face 13 feet off the ground at the Job Corps Recreation Center’s climbing wall. Supported by thin climbing rope, each step she takes up the elevated obstacle delivers a scream of excitement. When she reaches the top, coaches cheer Baldwin’s success from the blue mat below.

Baldwin, a blind athlete, has done this before, and said each time the rush is the same.

On Thursday, 11 students ages 9 to 19 from all over Alaska began Camp Abilities, a one-week developmental sports camp for blind and visually impaired youth.

Students spend a week in the Mat-Su Valley participating in sports like goalball, beep baseball, rock climbing, swimming, hiking, tandem biking, running, and track and field. The camp, co-founded by Alpine Alternatives in Anchorage, allows blind to near-blind students to showcase their physical abilities, and for a time explore being athletes first.

Baldwin said her favorite sports at the camp are rock climbing, beat baseball, running and swimming.

“Rock climbing is cool when you get all the way to the top,” she said. “It feels good; feels like you’re floating.”

This is Baldwin’s second camp where she has attempted the rock wall. After her latest successful ascent, she said she now feels like a pro.

“It empowers them to achieve the best can do in school and sports,” said Margaret Webber, executive director of Alpine Alternatives in Anchorage, of the athletes at Camp Abilities. “The camp is set up to provide a one-on-one instructional situation for each child.”

Webber, along with founder Lauren Lieberman of New York, helped launch Alaska’s Camp Abilities in 2001. That year, Webber attended a seminar where Lieberman was giving a presentation.

“She was discussing recreation activities for people with visual impairments,” she said. “It sounded right up our alley.”

Alpine Alternatives’ mission is to deliver services to people with all types of disabilities, including the visually impaired, Webber said.

“Lauren was talking about her camp in New York for the visually impaired and asked if there was anyone up here who could run a camp like this,” Webber said. “That’s when we started Camp Abilities in Alaska.”

In 1995, Lieberman and her students from Brockport State College of New York launched Camp Abilities in Rochester, N.Y., and later in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, Puerto Rico, Maryland and Guatemala. The camps have earned such a strong response that new camps are opening in Texas and Nebraska next year.

Since 2001, Alaska’s Camp Abilities has found a home at Meiers Lake campground in Wasilla with sports activities held at the Job Corps Recreation Center in Palmer and the Palmer High School pool. Partnered with the Lions Club of Alaska, which provides volunteer services to the camp, Alpine Alternatives has worked with dozens of visually impaired students.

Diana Cummings, governor of the District 49A Lions organization, said Alaska Lions understand the need for a visually impaired program for youths in the area.

“We do everything from cook meals for them to furnishing ice cream sundaes and helping wherever we can,” Cummings said. “It’s a project we’re really proud of, something we can come together for.”

Lieberman, a professor at The College at Brockport in Rochester, has spent 13 years specializing in adapted physical education, especially with children with sensory impairments.

“I realized my students weren’t getting the opportunities to teach kids with visual impairments,” she said. “You can’t learn any of this from a book, a video or a simulation. So, I wrote some grants and got some money to start the first Camp Abilities in New York in 1995. Since then it’s grown and we’ve served over 1,100 kids over the years. These are kids that have gone on and competed in high school sports, in their community and go on to Paralympic training.”

On Friday, campers, counselors and volunteers packed into the Jobs Corps’ gymnasium to play goalball, a sport that relies on listening.

Goalball is a sport that pits teams of three against each other trying to throw a ball (which has bells embedded in it) into the opposing goal. Athletes use the sound of the bells to judge position and movement of the ball, blocking where they can to prevent it from passing the goal line.

“The parents absolutely love it,” Webber said. “These kids learn skills and socialize with other kids with the same disabilities. There are kids at this camp from Yakutat, Wrangell and Good News Bay, places where they’re not able to find others like themselves.”

Alaska’s Camp Abilities signed on more than enough volunteers for the sports camp, 14, as each student requires one-on-one training and mentoring. College students from New York, Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania jumped on board to help at Lieberman’s camps, hoping to take home knowledge about teaching visually impaired sports in physical education classrooms.

Over the weekend, all 11 campers hiked Hatcher Pass and visited the gold mines, listening to their surroundings and taking in the beauty.

But not all is fun and games. Lieberman said each student is measured on his or her skills and progress throughout the week to show their physical education teachers at their schools what they can do, receiving school credit in return.

Lieberman said that over the 13 years she’s been involved with Camp Abilities, she’s enjoyed helping the blind participate in sports and taking them out of what can sometimes be socially isolated environments.

“That’s the one thing that keeps me going,” Lieberman said. “Also, it’s when parents e-mail me and say their kid is going to a cross-country ski event or are pursuing the sports they learned here, it just makes my day to see how successful the kids are. Plus, they make lifelong friends and come back to volunteer for future groups.”

Tommy Class, 16, a partially blind sophomore attending Colony High School, has attended six camp abilities since 2001. This year, Class is a volunteer helping youths play the same sports he learned at Camp Abilities.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I started this thing,” Class said. “I had done swimming and wrestling before this, and so I thought, ‘Whoa, blind sports.’ I didn’t know they were around. Now, I just want to give back to the camp and watch them succeed on a sports level.”

Class said the camp has helped him to be disciplined and understand that with hard work, practice makes perfect.

“I can throw a silent goalball now,” he said. “That’s where you put enough spin on it to where you can’t hear the bell in it when it rolls.”

Haley Schedlin, an undergraduate at the College at Brockport in New York and director of sports for Alaska Camp Abilities, began studying with Lieberman a few years ago.

“She became my mentor,” she said. “She definitely has opened doors for me in this field.”

Schedlin oversees all sports activities and training, as well as makes sure the kids are learning about sports and each other.

“My goal is to help with the socialization of the kids,” Schedlin said. “It’s the only opportunity they have to be a part of a group of peers. It’s their time to show people what they can do. Our motto is ‘loss of sight, never a loss of vision,’ and so when they come here, they’re able to do so. They can show people that, yes, I have a visual impairment, but that doesn’t stop me from doing what I want to do.”

At night, Schedlin said, campers take a brisk dip in Meiers Lake, participate in rowdy campfire games and partake in all the same summertime camping activities most summer camper do.

One misconception people may have about the blind is that they are limited in playing any kind of sport, Schedlin said.

“People may think that because they might not have full sight that they are not capable of doing anything,” she said. “When they leave camp, they take their assessment with them, which lets them participate in sports at school. It tells people they are able.”

For one week out of her busy year, Jacinda Danner, a vision and Braille specialist for the Mat-Su Borough School District, teaches kids how to rock climb and ride a tandem bicycle. As Danner helps a camper strap in his gear to take on the climbing wall, Mindy Baldwin screams for joy from the top.

“Mindy’s pretty phenomenal,” Danner said.

As a co-founder of Alaska’s Camp Abilities, Danner said she finds the rewards of working with the visually impaired never-ending.

“This camp is amazing for them,” Danner said. “These kids take self-confidence and self-esteem with them. P.E. can be a struggle, even humiliating, especially when they are involved in school games like dodgeball, football or baseball, where balls are flying at their heads. If you’re visually impaired, it’s something you can be excluded from most of the time and usually no one wants you on their team. Here, eve ryone wants you on their team. Everyone is equal and the sports are adapted for them.”

Danner said she keeps coming back to Camp Abilities each year to see the growth in communication between the kids.

“As a teacher, my main goal was to rally to help these guys get some social skills,” she said. “Even the kids from Anchorage have never met another kid with a visual impairment. It’s sad. Here they have a chance to be a part of [something] and stay healthy at the same time. What a winning concept.”

Contact J.J. Harrier at valleylife@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.