Do You Know About Goalball?

In this edition of Ask About the ADA, Joe Zesski shares a segment featuring athletes and takes a closer look at this unique sport. Goalball is a Paralympic sport for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. For a transcript of today’s episode, please visit the Ask About the ADA podcast feed on BuzzSprout.

Transcript

Joe Zesski

Hello, welcome to Ask About The ADA, the podcast, where we answer your questions about the Americans with Disabilities Act and how it applies to people's everyday lives. Here at the Northeast ADA center, we produce a lot of different types of content, including videos. One of our projects that we have is intended to help educate children about people with disabilities, and how they are a part of the community.

Joe Zesski

I invite you to check out this series of videos and the link will be in the podcast description. As part of that series we developed a video about the sport of goalball. Goalball is an adaptive sport created by and for people who are visually impaired. It is a Paralympic sport and it's one that many people aren't familiar with. We'd like to take this moment to try to share that video with you, so that you can learn a little bit more about the topic. Let's take a listen. 

Narrator

It's a Sunday morning in New York City at a goalball practice. Players who are blind or visually impaired from several states are here, including Kevin Orcel. 

Kevin Orcel says, “It's a very fast paced, very intense sport. I'll say as you get more advanced, the throws that you'll have to block are a lot harder, they're a lot faster. Players obviously play a lot more aggressive with one another. But really, it’s the speed of the ball that changes. You know, the ball can go from one end of a basketball court to the other end in less than two seconds.”

Narrator

Both men and women play; Raven Velez says, “basically a cross between bowling and dodgeball is usually what I kind of tell people. You know, I also incorporate that you have to kind of, like, dive for the ball.”

Narrator

Here's how goalball works. The sport is played on a volleyball sized court in a gym. There are three players on each side. One on the left, one in the middle and one on the right side. There is also a string on the floor in the back and sides of the court, so players can feel where their boundaries are. 

Jahron Black: “The object is to defend the ball. The ball is about three and a half pounds. And it's volleyed back and forth, kind of like bowling. So, you know, the goal is to get the ball behind the opposing team and you have to block the ball with your body. The ball has bells in it. That's how the players are able to track it. And the floor is tactile. And that's how players are able to feel around with their feet as they're moving. 

So we're literally going off communication, the tactile on the floor and obviously like listening. So just like, you know, if you look at sports like basketball, football I mean like hockey, you know, tennis. There's always a visual aspect where you can see the ball coming. You can see the person coming, you can see what's happening. This one is you have to trust your ears, and you have to trust your teammates, and you have to trust the fact that you know where you are within the surface or within, like the court of play.”

Narrator

That three and a half pound ball is heavy. So players are pretty tough when it hits them as they are diving on the floor. Because some people who are legally blind or visually impaired can see a small amount, everyone wears blacked out goggles or a blindfold, so no one has an advantage. Each game is 24 minutes long with 12 minute halves. 

Jahron Black has played goalball at the highest levels. Jahron Black says, “I've been playing goalball for maybe 15 years or so. I was part of the Youth USA team, back in 2011. We secured a bronze medal in Colorado Springs. I also had the privilege of traveling with our adult USA team to Brazil in 2018 to compete in competition. We also came in third at that competition. And, yeah, I've been training with, you know, team USA from probably off and on since, you know, since 2011. 

As to its history… Kevin Orcel says, “The one unique thing about goalball is it's a Paralympic sport, but it is its own original sport. So it's the only sport in the Paralympics that is its own original sport. So for example, wheelchair basketball obviously is an adaptive version of basketball. But there has never been any sport that's goalball where you take it and then do an adaptive version of that. So goalball in itself was created for individuals with a visual disability. 

It was started back in 1945, right after World War two, for veterans who were wounded. And, you know, obviously was, created as a form of physical therapy and therapy for athletes and World War Two veterans. But the sport itself became so popular in the 1970s, they entered it as a Paralympic sport. And now it's played in over 112 different countries.”

Jahron Black says, “A lot of people, when they watch the sport, they think that it's easy, you hear a lot from people until they actually get under those blindfolds in play. Because to them, sometimes it just looks like some people just diving on the floor and they don't really understand the concept of it, because a lot of the times they see the lower level play right, the beginners, the newbies, they don't get to see that high level play all the time. And so it's like, oh, this is easy, this is easy, until they put on the blindfolds and actually have to move around without their sight. And learn the different types of throws. Like there's, there's so many different variations of shots you can throw. You can throw a smooth ball, you can throw a skip ball, you can throw a high bounce ball. Some people spin like myself. I spin almost like I'm throwing a discus. 

I would just tell people overall, don't underestimate anybody in this world, right? A lot of people, when they see blind people, they think that they have a cognitive disability, and that's not the case. Our mind is sharp, right? Like, I said, the only thing that we're lacking is our sight. Some of the smartest people in the world have disabilities. And just because you don't see a disability doesn't mean that somebody is not disabled. And just because you see a disability doesn't mean somebody is not able.

Joe Zesski

I hope you enjoyed that segment about goalball. If you want to learn more about different types of accessible sports and people with disabilities, please feel free to visit our website and look at our series for school aged children. And as always, if you have any questions about the Americans with Disabilities Act, please feel free to contact us here at the Northeast ADA Center.

I'm Joe Zesski, program manager at the center. I'd like to thank Nina Leach and Peter Quinn for editing this podcast, and please feel free to reach out with questions. You can find us at northeastada.org.