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The Paralympics is the goal.
You’re standing in front of a wide goal on a hard court with two of your teammates on either side of you. You’re blindfolded. The crowd is silent. You can’t hear anything except your own heart beating through your chest. Then, your ears pick up a faint jingle from the other end of the court. The sound gets louder and louder as you brace for the impact of a heavy ball hurtling at sixty kilometres an hour to hit your body. Funnily enough, you dive towards the jingling sound and consequently the ball, to stop it from entering your goal. You feel the ball hit your leg and the jingle stops. The crowd erupts in a cheer.
This is Goalball, a sport created for people who are blind or have low vision. Guide Dogs Client Zara has experienced the adrenaline rush of playing at an elite level for the last few years. She’s competed in the NSW Goalball team since 2019 and internationally for the Australian women’s Goalball team, the Aussie Belles since 2022.
“I want to go to the Paralympics one day. That’s been my dream for as long as I can remember,” Zara says.
Zara was introduced to Goalball at a Guide Dogs Youth Holiday Camp by one of the camp’s speakers, Goalball Paralympic Athlete Amy Ridley.
“Amy kept telling me to come and try Goalball just for fun so when I eventually did, from the first session I was hooked.”
Playing Goalball at an elite level requires discipline and long hours of training. Zara fits in five training sessions a week by herself and with trainers in the gym, two on-court sessions every week and training camps with the rest of the team over some weekends. With players scattered all over the country, everyone travels interstate to attend camps to train intensively before coming home with feedback and implementing it at a state level.
“It’s a lot of self-driven training everyday but then we use the time we have together as a team effectively to work on combinations and strategy,” says Zara.
Even though her ultimate goal is to get to the Paralympics one day, Goalball has taken Zara to twelve different countries already, including the World Championships in Portugal and the Youth World Championships in Brazil where her team snagged a silver medal.
Many of the overseas competitions are International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA) qualifiers where teams compete for a chance to represent their country at the Paralympics.
However, jet setting is nothing compared to the community Zara’s met through the sport. Teammates have turned into gym partners and then into friends. Travelling together for weeks at a time always helps foster that strong bond.
“The community is the best part of it. We get along and squabble like a little family. Everyone’s got low vision so we can all empathise with each other and help each other out with different aspects of our lives.”
