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Blindness Doesn't Deter Spriggs's Mat Vision
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"What Michael does is he showcases abilities of blind athletes against sighted athletes and helps to break down the barriers," said Mark Lucas, executive director of the United States Association of Blind Athletes in Colorado Springs, where Spriggs competed last summer for its junior national judo team.
"The majority of [blind students] sit on the sideline in PE class because a PE teacher doesn't know how to integrate that kid into the curriculum."
That was exactly the problem facing Flowers Coach Odist Felder when Spriggs approached him about trying out in October 2006.
"I was constantly thinking: 'How am I going to get him to understand certain moves? How am I going to yell out things to him? How am I going to coach him in a match?' " Felder said.
Felder, who also was Spriggs's math teacher during the 2006-07 school year, learned the key to teaching his newest wrestler was using Spriggs's other senses. In class, Felder used corkboard, pins and rubber bands to help teach all his students basic geometry. He saw how Spriggs identified the hypotenuse in a right triangle or the two equivalent sides of an isosceles triangle by feeling the rubber bands. Felder realized he could teach Spriggs wrestling the same way.
"I saw from that that he had to physically experience every concept in order for him to learn it," Felder said. "I couldn't just say something to him. He had to mimic the move in order for it to work.
"We have to use him as the person we [practice] the move on. He becomes the test dummy, I guess, but that's the only way you can teach him. I told him, 'We're going to figure some things out along the way.' "
No lesson proved more difficult for Spriggs, however, than first acknowledging his condition.
Gradual Acceptance
By the time Spriggs finished fourth grade at Carrollton Elementary, his vision had so deteriorated that he was admitted to the Maryland School for the Blind in Baltimore. He boarded at the school each week from Sunday night until dismissal on Friday, returning to his New Carrollton home only on weekends.
On Oct. 28, 2002, while competing in a swim meet for MSB at the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia, Spriggs was poked in his right eye, rendering it so damaged that it was removed and replaced with a prosthesis. Shortly afterward, Spriggs said, the vision in his left eye began to rapidly decline.
"I had a lot of trouble accepting it," Spriggs said. "I didn't want to use my cane. I didn't want to use Braille. I was under the impression that I was going to have bad vision the rest of my life, but my time was suddenly running short."
Suddenly, Spriggs was confronted with the reality that his vision never would plateau, as he had hoped throughout his childhood, and eventually would disappear. Reluctantly, he began to embrace the life of a blind person. He learned and became proficient in goalball, a sport played by blind or visually impaired athletes in which two teams of three attempt to roll a ball over the opponent's goal line and try to defend their boundary by listening to bells placed within the rolling ball.
