Activity teaches lessons well beyond sport

  Thursday, October 6, 2016 2:00 AM
  News

Pittsburg, KS

Students in Laura Covert’s therapeutic recreation class learned a new sport this week, and a lot more.

Jim Debus, a sight-impaired athlete, came to PSU to teach the students the Paralympic game Goalball and also some lessons about people who are blind or have other disabilities.

“It’s given me an opportunity to travel all over the country and the world,” Debus said. “So I feel like there is no shortage of things we can do when provided that opportunity.”

Goalball was invented in 1946 as a way to help with the rehabilitation of disabled World War II veterans. The game pits two teams of three blindfolded persons, facing each other, across a gym floor. The object is to roll a bouncy rubber ball, which has bells in it, past three defenders guarding a goal about 29 feet wide. The players rely on the sound the ball makes to react and defend the goal.

Before they could play the game, the PSU students, who wore blindfolds or blackened goggles, had to learn the basics. They learned to orient themselves by feeling lines taped on the floor on top of string. They also learned they had to listen to each other and to communicate verbally or by clapping or banging on the floor.

Covert, an assistant professor in the Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation, said the Goalball demonstration was helpful for her students not just because it is something they may able to use with clients or patients in the future, but also because it helped them better understand persons who are classified as disabled.

“Just because someone is classified as disabled, that doesn’t mean that they can’t participate in anything else that we can participate in,” Covert said. “There are opportunities for everybody.”

Covert said therapeutic recreation is a type of therapy that uses recreation and activity-based interventions as to rehabilitate an individual. Students who graduate from PSU’s therapeutic recreation program may go on to work in hospitals, behavioral health, fitness centers, city parks and rec departments, retirement communities, schools, and adapted sport programs.

For more information on the Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation, visit http://www.pittstate.edu/college/education/health/.

Goalball athlete and instructor Jim Debus, left, teaches student Jack Mercer the basics of Goalball. (below)