Pine-Richland wrestlers help teach sport to the visually impaired

By: Jerin Steele
Saturday, July 20, 2024 | 11:01 AM

Owen Long loves wrestling and appreciates any opportunity he can to share his passion with others.

So, when Pine-Richland coach Ian Abplanalp approached the team about spending the day teaching the sport to visually impaired kids at the Envision Blind Sports Camp in Erie, he immediately volunteered to help.

Long wasn’t the only Rams wrestler that signed up.

A total of eight members of the Pine-Richland wrestling team made the drive to Penn-State Behrend on July 15 to give lessons to visually impaired kids from across the country.

“It was fun to go out there with my teammates and show them a sport that they may end up liking,” said Long, who will be a junior this fall. “I think wrestling is a very accessible sport for visually impaired athletes, because there’s a lot of feeling and sensing pressure. It was a very cool experience to help out with something that is much bigger than me.”

Abplanalp and assistant coach Rob Hunt, Long, Robert Hoy, Matthew Hoy, Sam Harris, Alden Rockacy and Nathan Painter were the Rams who made the trip.

They did six one-hour sessions with different groups of campers that ranged from partially blind to fully visually impaired.

The training sessions focused on different moves that are feel-based.

“I got a lot more out of it than I thought I would,” said Harris, who is an upcoming senior at Pine-Richland. “I didn’t know how fun it would be going into it, but I turned out great. I loved helping out. It gave me a lot of respect for them and how they get through their day to day.”

Abplanalp had worked with Envision Blind Sports Camp founder Wendy Fagan in the past when the camp was in Slippery Rock, but this is the first time he had done so since it moved to Erie.

He was unsure how many of his wrestlers at Pine-Richland would volunteer to go up for the day and was pleased with how many were willing to donate their time.

“I figured it’d be me and four or five kids going up in my truck, but we got such a good response that we had to rent a school van,” Abplanalp said. “I think our kids got a lot more out of it than they may have been expecting. Not only did the kids at the camp get a lot of it, but I think our Pine-Richland athletes did as well.”

There’s been a track record of visually impaired athletes excelling in wrestling.

Derek Cote, a legally blind wrestler, won three state titles in Maine and is currently wrestling in college at Southern Maine. Another legally blind wrestler, Jay Spencer, won a state title in Alabama in 2019. He wrestled at Huntingdon College in Alabama.

“Wrestling has a modified rule set that if you’re wrestling a visually impaired person where you just have to keep in contact with them,” Abplanalp said. “Visually impaired wrestlers can enter the same events as everyone else. I think that is a special part of why the kids liked wrestling. It’s feel based, so they can pick it up intuitively, and it’s a sport they can participate in without a lot of accommodations. It’s cool that they can go home from the camp and if they want to, sign up to participate at their local high school.”

Long said that at least one of the groups in each session told him that wrestling was their favorite sport they tried.

Some of the camp participants have wrestled before and others that were trying it out for the first time.

Regardless of the skill level, Long was happy to help.

“They were all out there giving their best, whether it was their first time or not,” Long said. “It’s a sport where they can get instant feedback.”

Jerin Steele is a freelance writer

Tags: Pine-Richland