Prep Sports
Tuesday,
April 27, 1999

  Walsh has success in sight
Blind runner amazes Snohomish teammates with her determination


Snohomish runner Patti Walsh competes in the 400-meter dash in a meet
Wednesday at Edmonds Stadium.


Snohomish's Patti Walsh, who is blind, holds the baton while posing with
her 800-meter relay teammates )from left to right) Janessa Oppegard, Emily
Krause and Brandy Skoda.


By BOB MORTENSON Herald Writer
EDMONDS -- Patty Walsh waits on the backstretch at Edmonds Stadium. Waits
and listens for her 800-meter relay teammate amidst a throng of runners.

Sensing her teammate's approach, Walsh crouches at the ready.

"Mark," her teammate, Brandy Skoda, calls out and Walsh starts off in the
passing zone with her hand extended back towards the baton in Skoda's
outstretched hand.

"Cat," Skoda calls, signaling that she is passing the baton over to Walsh.
It is a difficult routine they have perfected over the course of the season.

The fact that Walsh is blind gives a whole new meaning to what is known in
track as the "blind exchange."

Fate handed Walsh a different kind of baton at an early age.

When she was five, a brain tumor caused Walsh to lose sight in her right
eye. She retained tunnel vision in her left eye.

By age 14 Walsh was robbed of the remaining vision in her left eye when
blood vessels leading to the optic nerve snapped.

It was a traumatic blow to an active teen who enjoyed team sports, skiing,
horseback riding and hiking.

"I just kind of withdrew from everybody," Walsh said of her emotional state
in the months following.

Walsh transferred to the Washington State School for the Blind in Vancouver
for her freshman year in the fall of 1995. There, Walsh learned how to read
braille and to get around with the use of a cane.

After a year she moved to a small Canadian town in Ontario province,
ironically named Blind River, where she lived with her father for two years
and competed in track.

An excellent student, Walsh returned to Snohomish last fall and has been
accepted at the University of Vermont where she plans to major in history
and minor in elementary education.

"I've always really liked kids. I just relate well to them," Walsh said.

"She is an individual who puts everything she has into her work," Snohomish
English teacher Jamie Stockton said. "She is so capable and independent
that I forget she has a disability."

Stockton recalls Walsh reading braille to deliver an oral classroom
presentation from Hamlet.

Tuck Gionet, who coaches sprinters at Snohomish, and taught Walsh in his
government class, is likewise impressed.

"To me she epitomizes the term student-athlete," Gionet said. "She wants to
do everything everybody else does and then some."

Gionet recounts how one day at practice he and each of the sprinters took
turns wearing a pair of simulation goggles that approximate what Walsh sees.

"All you could see was white," Gionet said, adding that he had each athlete
run 50 meters wearing the goggles. "They were amazed."

"She is so inspiring," Skoda, a fellow senior said. "She has such a great
attitude and never complains."

Walsh is able to differentiate between daytime and the dead of night, but
little else. She relies on sound and touch extensively. In track she runs
from the inside position. If she feels the groove on the extreme inside
edge of the lane she adjusts to the right. The movements of other runners
and structures, such as grandstands, alter sound waves and give Walsh a
feel for her position in a race.

"She has a sensitivity that you and I will never know about," Gionet said.

Walsh, who still enjoys hiking and horseback riding on her family's rural
acreage and also holds down a part-time job, has accepted her loss of sight

"At some point you just have to accept it for what it is," Walsh said. "I
just couldn't see myself being dependent and not accomplishing anything.
You can deal with limitations and get around them."

Walsh seems more than capable of handling whatever life passes her way.


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