He views athletics

He views athletics

in a different light

Chris Schreiber

You have undoubtedly seen him walking across campus, but it is a
safe bet that he has not seen you.

You may have marveled at his uncanny sense of timing or the will
that you know he possesses but have never had occasion to
observe.

You, like me, may watch in wonder as Darren Gresham traverses
stairs, dodges green construction fences and walks from class to
class like every other student …

You may do these things because Darren Gresham is not like every
other student. Darren Gresham is blind. A blind student. A blind
basketball player. A blind skier. A blind weight lifter. A blind
success story.

That story leaves you with a grab-bag full of emotions and asks
you to pull one out to experience. At 14, Gresham had 20-15 vision,
which means he saw things at a 20-foot distance what people with
perfect vision can see only from 15 feet away.

One morning at the end of his ninth-grade year he awoke, but,
with a problem.

"My eyes were blurry like when you get out of the pool and you
have chlorine in your eyes," he says. "I just put some Visine in my
eyes and went to school like normal."

But things were not normal. His condition worsened daily,
confounding his doctors. First they said he was nearsighted, but
couldn’t explain why the prescription glasses didn’t work. No test
proved helpful in pinpointing what was wrong, just pinpointing what
wasn’t wrong. His world was turned upside down, and not a single
person could tell him why.

After a world of tests, it was then learned that Gresham, now
18, has a hereditary condition called Leber’s Optic Atrophy, a
genetic trait that cripples the optic nerve and quickly destroys
its carriers’ sight. Two of Gresham’s uncles had suffered from the
same condition, but their blindness had been blamed on alcoholism.
Now they knew. But there was nothing to be done.

Over the course of the month, Gresham’s vision went from
better-than-perfect to legally blind.

"From the middle of May to the middle of August I went from
where I was, to where I am now," he says. "I can see shades three
feet in one eye, six inches in the other."

When I heard the story, I didn’t know which emotion to pull from
the bag. Sadness? Rage? Sympathy? Gresham pulled them all, and then
he put them away, quietly and methodically, as seems to be his
nature.

"When I first lost my sight, I was mad," he says. "I beat my
pillow into feathers. But you just have to face facts. Then I
started doing a lot of things once I lost my sight. I went rock
climbing. I took judo. I went skiing ­ I’d never been skiing
until I was blind! It was so much fun. Now I go every year."

In a way, blindness opened Gresham’s eyes. His life wasn’t
ruined by the change. It was just changed. And yes, it was
harder.

"It was hardest being a student," he says. "At first I didn’t
want to learn Braille ­ I guess because I just didn’t want to
lose my sight. So I was pretty much illiterate from September to
November."

So Gresham proceeded to learn Braille, learn how to use a
talking Apple computer and learn the ins and outs of surviving as a
sightless student in a sighted world.

The adjustments continued when he decided to come to UCLA, where
he is a sophomore sociology student. He memorized the campus in the
week before school started, and despite his deftness at
circumventing crowds, he still is thrown off at times. And, yes, he
will admit, he does get lost.

When he first came to school, for example, he tried to navigate
his way from Murphy Hall back to his room at Sproul Hall. He ended
up in Lot 5. "I guess you can say I went on my own blind man’s tour
of UCLA."

Finally deciding to ask for help, he stopped a man to ask how to
get to Bruin Walk, a home base of sorts for Gresham. "Son, you’re
already on Bruin Walk," the man responded.

Things like that still happen, but less and less frequently, and
when they do, Gresham just lets them roll off his back.

"New stairs pop up out of nowhere and that throws me off ­
especially the construction," he says. "But I know the campus
pretty well. I know North campus real well, but I get lost on South
campus."

Hmmm … sounds strangely familiar.

And while most things changed, some things didn’t. Gresham was a
basketball player and fan before he lost his sight and still is.
Both a player and a fan.

The fan part was easy to solve.

"Before, when I used to listen to (Los Angeles Laker
broadcaster) Chick Hearn, I thought he talked too much," Gresham
said. "Now I love it. It’s like you’re there at the game."

And like all true fans, it isn’t enough just to watch ­ or
listen. So Gresham started playing again, and still does. Pretty
well, too.

He picked the game back up after a high-school hiatus when he
got a nine-foot hoop in his back yard. He started dunking and
playing more until he had reacquired most of his old skills. Gone
was his outside shot, but here were his newfound ball handling
skills. ("But I still look down at the ball," he says.
"Crazy.")

And his speciality now? No-look passes, of course.

Because he can see shades of light, he can recognize dark shirts
better that light ones, and though even he can’t explain it,
Gresham can see better at night than during the day. Those things
make three-on-three games not just a possibility but a reality.

"I never play more than three-on-three. Five-on-five? No, I look
sloppy ­ I look like I’m blind," he says with a laugh. "I can
stick with my man-on defense pretty well, I just pick the guy with
the darkest shirt. I play by sound. By the first couple points I
know the voices of (who’s playing). If they make a pass, they just
have to call my name so I can expect it."

And apparently, Gresham has shocked more than just a couple of
his opponents on the court.

"I try to go as long as possible without telling my teammates
that I’m blind," he explains. "Because I don’t really look blind,
most of the time they don’t know. But the first time they smack me
in the face with a pass I tell them because I don’t want to get
smacked any more.

"The best is when I finish a game and start to leave. I pull out
my cane and start to walk away, and guys on the other team are
like, ‘Dang! He’s blind?!’ I like that."

* * *

Life did not close its doors on Darren Gresham. And neither did
sports, which always have proven a little more inclusive than most
people think.

School, life, basketball and everything else goes on just as
always for Gresham. And there will be challenges just like everyone
else. But more of them seem to come off the court than on it,
because being the same as every other student can be a hard thing
when you’re not like every other student.

"It has been hard," he says. "But high school wasn’t nearly as
difficult as here. If I make it out of here, oh, hell, I am going
to be braggin’. I’ll get a bullhorn and start yellin’: ‘I am
graduating!’"

If he gets out of here? C’mon, now. When.