Imagine playing a sport like soccer or bowling blindfolded. That’s kind of what playing goal ball is like. 

Goalball is a Paralympic sport, played exclusively by athletes who are blind or vision impaired.  The object of the game is to throw a ball past the opponents and into their net to score points. 

Leah Smeltzer is teaching kids at Camp Abilities how to play.

"Everybody should have a chance to play any sport that they want," said Smeltzer, who is the sports specialist at Camp Abilities. "Just because you have a visual impairment does not mean that you can do anything less than anybody else."

Camp Abilities is a sports summer camp for the blind and visually impaired and they offer many different sports. The organization has camps across the world and there are five in New York state.

“You get to be around all these people who are the same or who have relatively the same hardships as you," camper Ted Carl said. "When you come here, it’s like you’re in this whole new world. Everything’s in braille. They try to make [it] as stress free as possible. It's great."

Smeltzer plays goal ball across the country and recently competed in the Goalball National Championships. Her dream is to make it on the USA Paralympic team in 2028. Smeltzer never had adaptive sports growing up, that's one of the reasons she loves to teach kids.

“Not everybody and not every school has the either experience or the ability, the tools and the resources to be able to teach certain adaptive sports," Smeltzer said.

This is why Carl says he’s grateful to have coaches to look up too, like Leah.

“It’s good to see that there are other people going through the same thing and they’re very successful," Carl said.