Brieann Baldock: What I like
about goalball is it's very specific. And it's, it's quick,
it's, it's, it's very fast twitched. And those those types
of games where you can really get a lot of aspects out of it
and use a lot of your skills that you know someone living
with a visual impairment has their whole life. But then it
really highlights all of those different skills, like your
touch, body awareness, self awareness, those those things
that you don't actually think about that are really key
aspects. That's why I love it. My name is Briean Baldock. I am
bound for the Paris Paralympic Games in a week. My role at
Athabasca University is I'm an accessibility advisor. So I work
in the Accessibility Services department, working with
students with disabilities. Goalball's been around since
1946 it was actually an adaptation for blinded war
veterans, so that's how they kind of created it. And as the
game has grown, it's been, it's been all equalized, really, like
there's no women's ball, there's no men's ball, it's all the
same. The only thing that really changes is the level of throw
speed. So what it's like and what it means for preparation to
be the only athlete in Edmonton area, you kind of have to be a
little bit creative on your training sessions, as we saw
today, I had to use the wall as a as a net, because the nets are
nine metres long and you can't always take them everywhere.
They're not portable, and lots of communication with your
support staff and coach for the national team. So I tend to have
lots of conversations about what I'm going to work on in that
training session, as well as you know, having people to help you
out. You know, my fiancé helps me out all the time with these
sessions, and I'm super grateful because I wouldn't be able to
practise really and or my practice would be very boring.
That feeling of putting on the eye shades and getting to
experience that darkness of the goalball, it feels pretty
surreal. It it definitely puts you into that mind connection
of, okay, it's game time. You really have to focus on the
skills that you've built. Trust here, trust the your training
that you've done, and trust your teammates and the people around
you and your coach who is communicating with you when
possible, and just kind of trust the process and really let your
your body take over, because your your body will surprise you
sometimes of the things that it can do. Yeah. So the goalball is
a little bit different than other sports, mainly for the
audio aspect of it. No other sports really have that aspect
of the sound. It's three pounds and it doesn't really bounce
much. It that's what it's meant for is not supposed to be
completely inaudible, so where we can't hear it, that's the
point of the ball. Yeah, I'm pretty I'm pretty excited to
leave for Paris. It'll be a super cool experience. You know,
my last games were the Tokyo Games, so definitely a different
experience than Paris will be. And you know, my fans can come,
so my parents are gonna come down and take a look at all the
competitions. So that's super exciting. It'll get to feel a
lot different. So I'm really, really excited and really
honored to get the opportunity to do this one more time.