Excluded from most school sports as a child because she couldn’t see, sports-mad Shamaila Kauser and her team mates in the Nottingham Sheriffs Goalball Team are now winning trophies and aspiring to national glory at the Paralympics in 2016.
Shamaila, aged 20 from Radford, captains the Nottingham Sheriffs Goalball Team organised jointly by the Nottinghamshire Royal Society for the Blind (NRSB) and the University of Nottingham. The team obliterated the competition, winning all of their matches at the Goalball UK Novice Tournament held in Hull in December, bringing the trophy home for Nottinghamshire. As a result they will now move from the Novices league to the Intermediate league and Shamaila already has her sights firmly fixed on even greater success in the year ahead.
Accepted as a Paralympic sport for London 2012, Goalball is a game played by two teams of three players with a maximum of three substitutions on each team. It is open to both male and female visually impaired athletes and sighted players can also play domestically. All players wear eyeshades so that they are totally unsighted and can play on equal terms.
Shamaila is registered blind and has only a minimal amount of light perception in both eyes. Like both her sister and father, she has an eye condition known as Retinitis Pegmentosa, which left her virtually blind by the age of eight. A law and Spanish student at Nottingham Trent University, she has always been fiercely independent and has never allowed her sight loss to hold her back, but like many of her visually impaired goalball team mates, she has always struggled to participate in sports and has often felt excluded from mainstream sports.
“I love sports, especially goalball,” explains Shamaila, “but until I moved to Nottingham and was put in touch with the Sheriffs, I’d always felt really excluded. Discovering goalball and getting involved in this and other sports has been the most life enhancing experience imaginable and I’m so grateful to our coaches at the University of Nottingham and NRSB for encouraging me and my team mates to achieve our full sporting potential.”
“Goalball can be a brutal sport as you quite literally use your own body as the goal post! Goalball balls are also heavier and harder than standard footballs and contain the added weight of bells inside them, so when they hit you at speed, you really know about it, but the sense of achievement you feel when you stop your opposition from scoring is exhilarating. I’ve made so many new friends through the sport and I love the fact that visually impaired players compete equally with non-disabled players, in goalball everyone is equal and nobody is excluded.
“I’m proud to captain Nottingham Sheriffs, and I hope, now that goalball is a Paralympic sport, that if I keep training and keep performing well, I might even represent my country at the Paralympics in 2016.”
Michael Conroy, Chief Executive at NRSB, said: “NRSB works in partnership with the University of Nottingham to deliver many of our accessible sports for local blind and partially sighted people, many of whom find themselves needlessly excluded from mainstream sports. As the country turns its attention to the anticipated achievements of our elite Paralympic athletes later this year, it is important to remember that for many disabled people sports remain sadly inaccessible; something which we at the NRSB are committed to see change, ensuring that more visually impaired people of all ages and abilities have to opportunity to engage in sport, improving their physical fitness and quality of life.”
Hannah Webber, Disability Sport Officer at the University of Nottingham: “It’s fantastic to watch visually impaired people be given the opportunity to compete on equal terms with non-disabled people. I am really proud of the entire Sheriff’s team and applaud their dedication. I would encourage others living with sight loss, who want to play sports, to get in touch and give them a go, it could be one of the most rewarding decisions you make”.
Posted on Thursday 5th January 2012