JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Goalball competition is currently underway in Paris. It's a Paralympic sport that was invented for blind and vision-impaired athletes. Three players stand on each side of an 18-meter-long court.
(SOUNDBITE OF BALL BOUNCING)
SUMMERS: On offense, players attempt to roll or bounce a ball into their opponents' net. And on defense, players have to stop that ball from entering the net. Inside that ball are bells so that the players can hear the ball as it makes its way down the court.
(SOUNDBITE OF BALL BOUNCING)
SUMMERS: The ball itself is about the size of a basketball, hard and heavy, nearly three pounds. Players have to shield their faces as they dive onto the floor to block incoming balls.
KURT SLOOP: If you drop it, it's not a bouncy ball like a basketball. It just thuds.
(SOUNDBITE OF BALL THUDDING)
SLOOP: When you see these guys bounce the ball, there's a lot of energy going into that.
SUMMERS: That's Kurt Sloop, the goalball program coordinator for the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes.
SLOOP: Basically, the way I got involved was I've been losing my sight since I was a kid, essentially. So I was in a pretty depressed state, and my wife saw this clinic that they were having and basically forced me to go. I was not happy about it. As soon as I got on the court and had the ball hit me for the first time, I was in it, you know, immediately.
SUMMERS: Goalball is the only Paralympic-level sport invented specifically for vision-impaired athletes.
SLOOP: You're just - you're not thinking about being blind when you're out on the court. It's probably the one space in your life where that just all washes away.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Quiet please.
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF BALL THUDDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Oh, yeah. That's the...
SUMMERS: Out on the court at a Saturday morning practice in Washington, D.C., the intensity is evident. Players dive and crash onto the court, and they use their whole bodies to block incoming balls. They do 360 spins before throwing a ball to throw it at maximum velocity. Players run their hands across the floor, feeling for the tactile lines that help them get back into position.
HALEY ANDRESS: At my first tournament, I was off the court entirely, I think, for two-ish minutes. And I also got completely so turned around that I threw the ball into my own net.
SUMMERS: Haley Andress is a Paralympic goalball hopeful. The U.S. women's team didn't qualify this year. She's hoping one day she could help change that. Like so many players here, goalball is more than just a hobby for Andress. She lost her vision when she was 20 years old.
ANDRESS: I think goalball and finding other blind people who are living successful adult lives, like, that was huge for me because all of a sudden, like, my world had felt so closed. And I didn't know, proverbially speaking, what it looked like to have my world be opened back up again.
SUMMERS: Now Andress looks totally comfortable on the court, moving back and forth to pick her shot and confidently communicating with other players on her team.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Go team. (Inaudible).
SUMMERS: That communication is a big part of goalball. Players help each other identify which side of the court the ball is coming from when on defense. But on offense, players are doing their best to cause chaos and misdirection, to generate sounds that confuse the opposing team.
VINCER COTTON: Before the throw, you can do all kinds of distracting stuff. You'll hear people go (exhale), right? - just a bellow, and they could not have the ball at all.
SUMMERS: Vincer Cotton has played goalball for nearly 35 years.
COTTON: When we spend enough time with each other, we develop a language. And I know what each person's little nugget is in communication. So Kurt will notify you where he is by saying, ya-ya (ph), ya-ya, ya-ya. Caleb will just flat out tell you move right so he can gun it from the center. You know what I mean?
SUMMERS: There are around 300 players nationally, says Kurt Sloop. So it's not unusual for new players to brush shoulders with Paralympic-level athletes. Two members of the men's national team, Christian King and Zion Walker, have been Sloop's teammates.
SLOOP: It's really exciting to go out there and know that, hey, I faced down - you know, I faced down a guy that's going to Paris. And sure, he scored on me (laughter), but I blocked a few of those. You know, I blocked a few of those balls.
SUMMERS: Now we're going to talk to one of the top goalball athletes. Andy Jenks is a former member of the U.S. goalball team and a Paralympic silver medalist. He joins us now.
ANDY JENKS: Hi. How's it going?
SUMMERS: I'm well. Andy, I want to start, if I can, with your story. Tell me a little bit about how you got into goalball, when you started playing and what made you want to stick with the sport.
JENKS: So for me, my story starts from birth. I have a congenital retinal condition called incomplete achromatopsia. I can see. I have some vision. I have very good vision for a blind person, very bad vision for a sighted person. At the age of 10, I attended a blind sports day at the University of Delaware sponsored by a regional organization and instantly fell in love. Goalball is a game where everyone plays on an equal playing field. And no one's at - no inherent disadvantage. Those same guys I was watching play, demonstrating the game, you know, for the crowd that was assembled, fell in love with me 'cause I'm tall and big.
SUMMERS: (Laughter).
JENKS: And that was it.
SUMMERS: Wow. OK, I want to talk a little bit about the goalball competition now at the Paralympics. What does the field look like? Who are the favorites? Who should we be watching?
JENKS: Yeah. So if we're thinking about - and goalball is a sport where there are men's and women's teams competing. So we'll focus on the men's competition now 'cause I'm sure you want to hear more about Team USA rather than the women's side, where the USA women, unfortunately, didn't qualify this time after a silver medal-winning performance in Tokyo. So the field, you know, odds-on favorite is Brazil. The Brazilian men's national team has pretty much dominated the last decade-plus.
I think that the team - that Team USA is one where we haven't had the best results recently. In Paris, there are only eight goalball teams. It's down from 10 total teams in years previous. So everyone makes the quarterfinals. And that's where I think the USA can shine. I also would not be surprised to see something great come out of the other side of the bracket from Japan or Ukraine.
SUMMERS: One thing that our team has heard as we've been talking to goalball players, is that everyone tells you, in some way or another, that they think that goalball saved their life. We heard how you got into this sport and started playing and some of your trajectory. But I just want to know, personally, what does goalball mean to you?
JENKS: Goalball is something that exposed me to and helped me learn about and develop my own identity as someone who has a disability. Disability is there. It's something that doesn't get talked about, and it's something that people need to learn more about. I got to see and experience, you know, firsthand what it was like to be disabled in Finland - right? - what it was like to have a visual impairment in Brazil, in Canada, in different parts of the United States, right? - how you get treated when you're traveling through an airport, right? Those kinds of things, in addition to a lot of common experiences - right? - that you might have, or any person with disability might have in school, things like that.
SUMMERS: That's Andy Jenks, former goalball Paralympian for the U.S. men's team. Andy, thank you.
JENKS: All right. Thank you.
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