Studentsfinally get to be "normal"

Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

Is it possible to not be able to see a thing, yet still have perfect vision? If you would have seen the faces on the participants of Camp Abilities, you would answer, "Absolutely!"

The camp (see related story) brought together more than 25 blind and visually-impaired children from around Alaska, and from Arizona, Washington and even Guatemala. For a week, those campers got to participate in sports they never have seen played before, like beep baseball, goal ball, archery, swimming and tandem biking. The kids can't see, but they certainly don't lack a vision in life.

As much as Camp Abilities was about getting blind and visually-impaired students to be introduced to sports and activities, it was even more of an exercise in socialization.

Take Tommy Class, a Tanaina Elementary student, for example. He had just finished playing goal ball. Instead of talking about the game, though, he wanted to talk about what was going on at Meier Lake Conference Center, where the athletes were being housed.

"Last night, everybody was up playing cards and reading under the covers until real late," Class said. "We were supposed to be going to sleep, but you could hear people saying 'You got any queens?'"

And how did the campers pull off those shenanigans after lights out? Simple -- they can play cards and read using Braille. Lights out doesn't mean much when you live in a world of darkness. That is the reason the camp has been so much fun -- it is breaking barriers.

"It is a big self-esteem boost for these kids," said Jacinda Danner, the Mat-Su School District's vision specialist. "Every kid gets to ride a bike, but for a lot of these kids at the camp, they have never even touched a bike."

Perhaps the best thing about the camp is that it puts special students in the position to succeed, rather than to fail. For most of their lives, the blind and visually-impaired students have been forced to change everything about their lives to comply with the rest of the sighted world. Last week, they were just there, having fun with new friends.

One camper from Anchorage was talking, and said she likes being a special person. After last week's camp, though, she realized something else -- she said she liked being normal for a change. She came to that realization because during the entire week, she was just another camper playing sports.

Nobody cared that she was blind, and nobody cared that she took an extra second or two to get her bearings before jumping on a tandem bike.

The entire world cared that she was having fun, though, and that's what being a kid is all about -- whether you are sighted or not.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor. He would have lost a game of beep baseball to the athletic campers.