By Muhammad Waheed
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Tim Utzig, a 19-year-old sophomore at Towson University, has memories of playing indoor and outdoor soccer with friends when he was a child. He said that one of his best memories was scoring six goals in one game while playing for a travel team.
Utzig’s time playing soccer decreased as he became visually impaired during the summer prior to his seventh-grade year. Utzig said he has Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy and only played indoor soccer after his eye sight diminished because the league he played in was accommodating because it used a different color soccer ball.
Blind athletes such as Utzig could soon have a chance to experience blind soccer as The Maryland School for the Blind will host the North American Blind Soccer Development Camp between June 25 and June 29.
Blind soccer is played on a 60-foot-long by 40-foot wide field that has barriers on its sides preventing the athletes and ball from going out of bounds, said Kevin Brousard, membership and outreach coordinator for the United States Association of Blind Athletes. Brousard said that there are 10 players on the field at once with each team having five athletes.
Blind soccer has been a Paralympic sport since the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, Brousard said.
However, Brousard said there has been little development of the game in the United States. He says he thinks that may change because the U.S. will host the 2028 Paralympic and Olympic games in Los Angeles the U.S.
As the host country, the U.S. will have an automatic bid to have a team compete in those games, Brousard said.
“The goal now is to start development of the sport domestically,” Brousard said.“How we’re going to do that with this camp is we’re inviting blind athletes and coaches from across the U.S. and Canada as well.”
Brousard said that Ulrich Pfisterer, chairman of the International Blind Sports Association blind football committee, would be coming from Germany and will help run the camp, which will consist of a coaching clinic and skill development training for athletes.
“With our coaches what we want to do is give them the skills and the tutelage so they can go back to their local areas whether they’re a teacher or coach at a school for the blind or somebody involved in blind sports in the USABA sports club network,” Brousard said. “We want to give them the tools at this camp to go back to Atlanta, to go back to Los Angeles – wherever they are in the country – to start a team and grow our domestic program for blind soccer on a grassroots level.”
Brousard said that the short-term goal for the camp is to get more people involved and that the long-term goal is to identify athletes and coaches to create a competitive international team.
Brousard said he hopes to have a blind soccer camp next year with the first national championship.
There will be 30 to 40 athletes and coaches at the upcoming camp, Brousard said.
Brosuard said that USABA is now focusing on blind soccer since interest in the sport lacked in the mid to late 2000s and is now growing.
Michael Bina, president of MSB and chairman of the board for USABA, said that he attended the 2016 Rio Paralympics and witnessed Team USA’s blind athletes, but noticed that the nation did not have a blind soccer team.
“I think I was witness to the absence of a USA team and so as the leader of the school I have the opportunity to talk to our physical education teachers here and they were very motivated and every one of them saw this as a great opportunity,” Bina said.
Bina said MSB is an ideal campus to host the upcoming camp because it has the facilities and staff to begin development of the sport.
The Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation built an outdoor multisport facility two years ago, including a track, basketball court and beep baseball and soccer fields, Bina said.
MSB’s students are excited to learn and play with others from around the world and have created a blind soccer team that practices once a week, said Matthew Mescall, a physical education and health teacher at MSB.
“It is an important and necessary step if the USA Paralympic program is serious about USA competing in the Paralympic games in the future,” Mescall said. “MSB is proud to host this event and to play a pivotal role in the development of the game of blind football here in the USA.”
Mescall said that MSB has the only field with barriers designed specifically for blind soccer.
The upcoming blind soccer camp will allow athletes such as Utzig to play soccer in a way which they may not have played.
“I would love to play blind soccer because it is taking a sport that I loved playing my entire life pre-vision loss and post-vision loss and adapting it to the world that I live in now,” Utzig said. “It would be the perfect situation for me and would be a great deal of fun for me.”