Herschel's in the News

This is an article from the Deseret Morning News on April 1, 2008. We were pretty excited they interviewed and mentioned Herschel...previous posts about Herschel click here

Take soccer, baseball, dodgeball and the concept of 3-on-3 down at the gym and you've got goalball.
Never heard of it? They have tournaments — the 13th annual elimination tournament for kids statewide went all day Monday at Crescent View Middle School in Sandy.
They have Team USA Olympic athletes: the No. 1 defender and the No. 5 thrower in the country lives in Logan. It's designated a USU club sport.
Six — probably more — of the best players in the country live in Utah, host of the 2008 USA National Goalball Championships and home of the 2006 USA girls and USA men's champions.
Want to play? Can you throw a rubber ball about the size of a basketball but more than three times heavier 10 times in about that many seconds and dive to the floor in between throws. Can you grab the ball, jump up and spin like a discus thrower and send the ball — with serious English — back across the court? Do you like the thought of getting your nose broke about every half minute?
Face guards? Never.
Still want to play?
Well, you can't. Not if you're reading this, anyway. You're welcome to watch, but if you're not legally blind you don't have what it takes to play goalball.

Herschel Kelly does. He's 18, a high school senior from American Fork and a member of the men's adult team in the national tournament. He goes to Logan twice a week to practice. Even though he's only been at it since January, he sure plays a mean goalball.
He should, he says, still sweating after vying for third place and still taking all the blame that three goals got passed him in the final minute.
"I was pretty much exhausted but I should have stopped them," he said. "That one, I thought I'd broken my nose again, but I still should have stopped it."
Asked if goalballers ever wear face protection, he said "No. They'd just get in the way."
They do wear goggles — darkened ski goggles that prevent the slightest hint of light coming through. Kelly and other visually impaired players at Crescent on Monday can see light, some color and shapes without them.
"Mostly, it's like I've got multiple astigmatism; I just see multiple and fractured images." He has a cornea condition that mostly continues to defy advances and his four doctors at the Moran Eye Center.
"They've used a laser to kind of cut out a hole in the cornea and put in little supports to help hold its structure, but it's degenerative, so we'll see how it goes."
Peter Ashton, 16, who has been playing about 10 years and who made the throws that got past Kelly in the final minutes, said he picked up on his opponent's weakness.
"During half time I overheard him saying he was really tired, so I just quick-pitched them like crazy at the end," Ashton said.
Hearing the other side — and the ball which has bells inside so players and sense it's speed and direction — is vital to winning. Ashton said. "That's why it has to be quiet when we're playing. People will try all sorts of tricks, like rolling it really slow to kind of throw you off. But the best way is to get it and get rid of it as fast as you can."
Kim Crowther of Kaysville said goalball is the only sport her son Austin Fowler, 11, and daughter Asia Fowler, 9, can play. They don't have Junior Jazz or Little League, she said, pointing out their team placed first, "and they just love it."