Mario is an 11- year-old hockey goalie.  He has been in vision therapy at our office because we’ve been working on his eye teaming.

 You see, when Mario looks off into the distance, his left eye has a tendency to wander outward.  It’s a medical condition known as Exotropia.  When his eye wanders, he will either see double or shut off the vision to that eye, therefore decreasing his depth perception abilities.  Not a good thing for a hockey goalie. 

 Mario’s hockey coach was one of the first to recognize that Mario had something going on with his vision.  When he would practice and play, his performance would tend to be variable; his timing would be off.  Mario’s coach recognized that normal training procedures weren’t really helping so started looking for other reasons.  He suggested that Mario get an eye exam. 

 We diagnosed Mario quickly and made a treatment plan and he’s been coming to vision therapy once a week. He works on his exercises at home, as well. When COVID hit, he moved to telemedicine visits and continued to improve in that format. 

 Now, he can control his eye turn and when he’s on his game, the coach recognizes the difference in his reaction time and number of saves.  He continues to work on improving his eye teaming and automaticity of his eye alignment. 

 All of this is good stuff that we see every single day with our athletes, through the power of vision therapy. 

 However, that’s not why I’m writing this blogpost.

 I’m writing about this case, because at his last progress check in, Mario’s mom brought me a sample of his handwriting before vision therapy, and another one from today.  AMAZING difference in his handwriting! 

 We don’t work on handwriting with Mario.  We work on VISION.  But VISION guides handwriting.  And reading. And math. And spelling.  And hockey goaltending.  And walking, running, cartwheeling, bike riding, hitting, and basically everything else you spend your time on. 

 So, take care of your eyes and think about them more than just how well they can see the letters off an eye chart in the distance.  It just might up your game in sports.  And in school! And, that’s no April Fool’s joke.