Blindness Doesn't Deter Spriggs's Mat Vision
Flowers Wrestler Learns to Overcome Disability

By Alan Goldenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 22, 2008

Michael Spriggs grabbed on to a teammate's shoulder and headed for the gymnasium wall, where William Ngakoue, a 215-pound junior on the C.H. Flowers High School wrestling team, rested after winning his first match. Leaning in closely, Spriggs peppered Ngakoue with questions about whether the advice he had given him before the match had helped.

"I wanted to know what he was thinking out there, what kind of moves he was using," said Spriggs, a 189-pound senior. "I'm glad he used the techniques I taught him."

Ngakoue carefully chose his words to describe the match to Spriggs, including the reversal that led to the eventual pin. He had to be very specific, because Spriggs couldn't see the match.

Spriggs, who is nearing the end of his final season as a high school wrestler, has been blind for more than five years. For two of those years, he also has been one of the most valuable members of the Flowers team.

"He shows me how to do things instead of telling me," Ngakoue said. "He knows what he's talking about."

Though Spriggs had limited wrestling experience prior to enrolling at Flowers in August 2006, he proved a quick study, primarily because he yearned to play a contact sport. After going 13-12 last season, he is 17-9 this season and is the third-seeded 189-pounder in this weekend's Prince George's County championships.

He has accomplished this despite being visually impaired his entire life. Spriggs was born with cataracts in both eyes and underwent surgery at 3 months to have them removed. Before he turned 6, doctors diagnosed glaucoma in both eyes. And a freak accident at 13 triggered a rapid descent into total blindness.

"Everything that could go wrong for him with his vision has," said his father, also named Michael Spriggs.

Spriggs is able to compete because of a simple rule modification by the National Federation of State High School Associations that allows blind wrestlers to face sighted opponents: Both wrestlers must begin the match with their hands touching and always must remain in contact. If contact is broken at any point, the referee blows his whistle and the two reconvene at the center to "touch up."

Because he relies on contact to wrestle, Spriggs often is the aggressor in his matches, lunging at his opponents with his strong upper body and anticipating their defense. Flowers team captain Zane McBride said the way Spriggs wrestles is "like taking a leap of faith."

Parkdale junior Emmanuel Omolola, who lost to Spriggs in their first meeting earlier this month, said Spriggs's blindness got in his head. "I got scared, thinking maybe he's not really that good, but he's amazing," Omolola said. "He's really strong. He has this amazing stamina."

Spriggs is one of the approximately 93,600 blind or visually impaired school-age children in the United States, according to the National Federation of the Blind. What separates him from many others, however, is his ability to have assimilated almost seamlessly with the sighted student population at Flowers.

"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.

He didn't, however, give up on being a part of the sighted community. By the time he started ninth grade, Spriggs was splitting time between MSB and nearby Parkville High, gradually integrating with sighted students.

"He outgrew" MSB, his father said. "They couldn't teach him any more."

After his sophomore year, Spriggs felt confident enough to return home and go to his local school because, he said, "Sometimes you've got to step out of the box."

His family wasn't as certain.

"I was worried about the support he was going to get," said his mother, Marquet Craig. "How many blind kids have they ever taught?"

His father said: "He was fine with it. I was the one who was scared. I know how kids can be in high school -- playing jokes, tripping you, hiding his cane."

It was Spriggs, however, who did the teaching. With memories lingering of his elementary school classmates teasing him about his Coke-bottle glasses, Spriggs set out to prove that he was just like the rest of the student body, but with a special skill.

Spriggs's chatty persona and self-deprecating humor helped relieve any tension or uncertainty classmates felt about interacting with him.

"He's a total flirt," said junior Ashleigh Riggs, a team manager. "He'll be like: 'Can you help me downstairs? Can you help me to the guidance office?' We know he knows where he's going, but he knows we're going to fall for it."

Spriggs said, "I wasn't sure what the reaction would be, but once my teammates supported me, that's all that mattered."

Lessons Learned, Lessons Taught

The support and understanding was assured during a practice last season, when Coach Felder told the entire team to wrap T-shirts around their eyes. Then he shut off the lights in the wrestling room, and the team paired off and practiced without the ability to see.

"Nobody understood what it was like for [Spriggs] before we did that, but when we did, we couldn't believe it," Flowers senior Josh Akinsanya said. "We didn't know how he could do it."

Their curiosity didn't end there. Spriggs's teammates struggle to understand losing something as fundamental as sight. They ask him questions about the last thing he remembers seeing or the last movie he saw. When Felder asked Spriggs if he "sees" total darkness, Spriggs replied, "It's like a mirror without a reflection."

"We have moments like that where I just won't understand it," Felder said. "Mike inspires me, though, that's for sure."

Spriggs said he hasn't noticed his other senses heighten since he lost his sight, but the way he shoots his legs backward when he feels an opponent reach for them or leaps up from his mat-side chair when he hears wrestlers tumbling toward him suggest otherwise. When other Flowers matches are unfolding, a teammate always sits next to Spriggs and delivers play-by-play to keep him involved in the match.

"He'll get more into a match than I will," said McBride, the team captain. "I'm like, 'How do you know he has to make that move?' "

Evan Henderson, a 189-pound junior, stood next to Spriggs when the team lined up according to weight at the beginning of the season. That day, Henderson became what McBride calls "Mike's designated guide." Anytime Spriggs is without his cane, Henderson must be at his side. He clutches Henderson's right elbow and lets his teammate lead him onto the scale for weigh-ins, around the mat for warmups and from the bench to the scorer's table to the center of the mat at the start of each match. Spriggs calls their interaction a "partnership."

The most important thing for Henderson or any teammate is never to leave Spriggs alone. "I always wondered how he got around," Henderson said. "It was hard to get our timing down, like when I would stop short, he'd run into me. But we've figured it out."

Spriggs, who has learned so much to live at such a high level, wants to continue opening minds and imparting lessons throughout his life. It's one of the reasons he hopes to become a teacher.

"I want to help people achieve what they think is impossible," Spriggs said.

He has plenty of firsthand experience.