It Was an Intervention of Sorts

By: Antoine Craig

I was a freshman at VCU. I was at the gym with a friend and she challenged me to run with her. I said, ‘I don’t run.’ But she persisted so I took a shoelace out of my shoe and attached it to our wrists. We started jogging the track. Then running. It was an amazing feeling. I felt like I was free, and I didn’t want to stop.

On the way out of the gym, we saw an ad for the 2014 Broad Street Mile. I reached out to the race organizers and then contacted Sportable. Sportable sent Karl Cover over to my house. We upgraded my shoelace with a proper tether. I tried to stop after a mile but Karl wouldn’t let me. We ran three miles. To this day, Karl doesn’t let me slack off and we still run all the time. Almost a decade training together.

I threw myself into athletics and I joined Sportable’s rowing team. My first day in a boat on the James River, one of the rowers missed a stroke. It’s called ‘catching a crab.’ That caused the whole boat to tilt to the point we were about to roll over. We figured it out, but it was wild. I still keep in touch with those old friends. We love to laugh about mishaps like that as I was learning to live with blindness. It really bonded us.

I was still training and had a goal of representing Team USA Track & Field in the Paralympics. I competed in several Paralympic events. I won silver in the 2021 U.S. Paralympic Trials but because of Covid, only the gold-medal runner went on to compete in Beijing.

So I decided to try something new.

I went to a Blind Soccer Camp hosted by the U.S. Association of Blind Athletes in Colorado. It’s a technical game. It’s physical. It requires speed and quick transitions. And good hearing. I never played soccer as a kid and it was really fun to play a team sport. I was sitting on the bench and I honestly didn’t want to go in the game because I had always avoided contact sports. Someone got knocked flat and the coach wanted to send me in. I was nervous, but I went in anyway.

Coach told me I needed to work on toughness and aggression. He assigned a teammate to come out of nowhere and knock me over. And over. And over. It worked. I gained a new appreciation for the game.

That first interaction with Sportable was an intervention of sorts. My life was going great, but when Sportable entered the picture, it thrust me into a whole other stratosphere than I had ever seen for myself. Sportable suddenly opened so many doors.

I just needed to run that first mile. It’s just practice, preparation, exercise, then run the race—it’s the same structure to accomplish anything in life.

===================

This year, MEDRVA Healthcare is providing cost-free Sportable memberships for individuals with visual impairments. Their support helps Sportable open doors for athletes like Antoine by creating opportunities to participate in sports and recreational activities.

Find out how you can get in the game by submitting an interest form at Sportable.org or calling 804-340.2991.