Sports Activity Summary July 1, 2018 thru June 30, 2019
Blind Athletes Inc is a sports club for blind and vision impaired based in central New Jersey focused on creating transformative opportunities and enabling the pursuit of excellence for vision impaired athletes. We believe in empowering happiness through adaptive sports, and promoting fitness, friendship, and fun for athletes of all abilities. We also coach and train our competitive athletes for success in competition. Our coaching objective and focus are to develop the person in every athlete. We want our athletes to stay active in all seasons. In order to do so, we support a multi-sports schedule including para-athletics, para-swimming, beep baseball and participation in road races such as 5K and half marathon. Our competitive athletes compete regionally, nationally and internationally. All our athlete’s train towards the same objectives – to raise their standard of excellence, strive for new personal records, and to discover the Champion within.
Noted below for each quarter is just a small sampling of the many photos and video taken for our sports club.
July 2018 – Sept 2018
Our main track and field season competitions finished by the end of June 2018. The photos below are from the 2018 CSH Invitational (which includes the last T & F meet group photo with our late co-founder Amo Musharraf). This was a very successful meet for our returning and first-time participants:
[Photo descriptions from top left: (1) group photo with our late co-founder Amo Musharraf, (2) female athlete in shotput event, (3) female athlete preparing to throw javelin, (4) female athlete throwing javelin, (5) group of observers sitting in the bleachers, (6) female running on the track, (7) female athlete in shotput event]
2018 NJ Tri-State Regional Track & Field meet:
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2018 Desert Challenge Games in AZ:
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Our athletes continued with indoor gym and some outdoor workouts and beep baseball practices:
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Our Beep Baseball Team – NJ Lightning competed well by winning one out of three games in a beep baseball tournament in Haddonfield, NJ on July 14th. It was the last tournament before some of our players were headed off to participate in the Beep Baseball World Series held in Eau Claire, Wisconsin (Jul 20-Aug 5):
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Time off for summer break/vacation towards the end of July into the beginning of August. We then participated in the Surfing for Vision event held on Aug 18th at Long Branch Beach in NJ.
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Next, our road races for fitness and cardio resumed in September – our first road race was on Sept. 15th Diamond 5K at Buccleuch Park, in New Brunswick, NJ. Participants consisted of blind and vision impaired athletes and individuals and several volunteer guide runners and walkers (students from Rutgers University). Three athletes received awards.
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Oct 2018 – Dec 2018
Continued our participation in Road Races, indoor gym training and some beep baseball practices (weather permitting). We hosted an event for the 1st inaugural National Blind Sports Day on October 6th, held a Buccleuch Park in New Brunswick, NJ. Blind and vision impaired participants and their family members and friends received the opportunity to try different blind sports activities – a day of physical fitness and fun.
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Our next two road races were on Oct. 14th – East Brunswick Road Race 5K:
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and October 21st Purple for Pappas 5K at the North Brunswick Community Park. Participation of athletes, individuals and volunteers was good. Two athletes received awards at the EBRR.
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We then had one athlete and coach (guiding) travel by car to Philadelphia and participate in the Rothman 8K which is a part of the Philadelphia marathon weekend:
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The next road race was held in Matawan, NJ for the Matawan Borough 5K Turkey Trot on Nov. 25th – the participation of athletes, individuals, volunteers was good, and one athlete received an award. December 2nd was our last scheduled 5K of the year for the Jingle Bell Run held in Metuchen, NJ.
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Jan 2019 – Mar 2019
Our first road race activity of the 2019 year included travel to Houston, TX for our sports clubs 3rd participation in the Chevron Houston ½ Marathon. Travel by air consisted of two athletes and one coach (athletes achieved successful results with their finishing times).
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Continued indoor gym trainings during the cold outdoor weather. Then participated in our second road race - the Cupids Chase 5K on February 9th at Buccleuch Park in New Brunswick, NJ. Despite the extremely cold weather that day one of our athletes achieved an award with a volunteer guide runner. Our next event was the Tri-state swim meet scheduled for March 2nd; unfortunately, our athletes who compete in swimming were not able to attend.
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Apr 2019 – Jun 2019
In April our outdoor track and field practices resume after winter and early spring break; and we continued our indoor gym and outdoor (weather permitting) training. Beep baseball practices began as well at the end of April. Volunteers were also in attendance for our track and field meets and beep baseball practices and games.
In track and field in May, we competed in The Invitational track and field meet on May 4th held at Rahway River Park in NJ with six athletes. The invitational is an open introductory meet for the experienced or first-time athletic competitors. We had student volunteers from Rutgers University.
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Now it is one year before the Olympic and Paralympic Games commence in Tokyo, Japan in August 2020 and our IPC/WPA licensed athletes must compete at IPC sanctioned track and field events. We traveled by air to AZ for the Desert Challenge – World Para Athletic Grand Prix (May 23rd-26th) – which included one coach, five athletes and a volunteer guide runner. A very successful trip as our athletes achieved several gold, silver and bronze medals for the various track and field events.
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Our 3rd track and field meet, was held in Lake Forest and Skokie IL for the GLASA Adult National Open on June 13th-16th. Our athletes attended an archery clinic and competed well achieving national records and new personal bests. We had one athlete compete in a swimming event at our 3rd athletics meet that was held in Lake Forest and Skokie IL for the GLASA Adult National Open on June 13th-16th. Our athlete competed well.
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June more beep baseball practice before the last tournament game:
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For Beep baseball, our team traveled by five carpools to the Beep baseball Beast of East Part I tournament which took place on June 29th at Speno Memorial Park in East Meadow, NY. The Beast of the East Part II took place on July 13th in Colts Neck, NJ.
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