by THOMAS LIN
Kevaughn Merrill awaits his turn during a lesson in blind tennis at Lighthouse International in Manhattan, an early adopter of the game. PHOTO/Béatrice de Géa/The New York Times
WATERTOWN, Mass. — Dan Guilbeault was 3 when doctors discovered a tumor called an optic glioma pressed against his optic nerves. He continued to play the sports he loved — basketball, baseball and football — until he lost most of his sight at 11.
Now he is 19 and almost completely blind, and his favorite sport is tennis.
When he first heard about tennis for the visually impaired, his reaction was “No way!” he said. “I was skeptical.”
So were faculty members at the Perkins School for the Blind here, when a sighted student from nearby Newton proposed it nearly two years ago. But Perkins, known for athletic innovations like adapted fencing, decided to offer what are believed to be the first blind tennis classes in the country.
Like tennis for sighted people, the game requires speedy court coverage and precise shot-making. Blind players rely on their ears to follow a foam ball filled with ball bearings that rattles when it bounces or is struck.
“Your ears have become your eyes,” said Dr. Robert Gotlin, director of orthopedic and sports rehabilitation at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.
Sejal Vallabh, a 17-year-old high school junior in Newton, encountered the sport during a summer internship in Tokyo and then proposed the program at Perkins. She set up a volunteer organization, Tennis Serves, which introduced the sport last year at Lighthouse International in New York and the California School for the Blind in Fremont.
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