Imagine you're at the start line, in your school's box, jumping, chattering, nervous high school runners shouldering for a spot on the field-wide chalk line. A momentary stillness, the starter's pistol cracks, and 200 loaded springs take off, bumping arms, clipping heels.
Now imagine, as you're making 8 to 10 miles per hour amidst churning bodies over uneven ground, that you're seeing all this through a keyhole. And the view through the keyhole is blurry, mostly shades of grey. As a matter of self-preservation, you'd be tempted to proceed very cautiously, right?
Not if you're freshman Hannah Scott, who is legally blind. "No, I try to get out fast with everybody, get a good place," she said in a recent phone interview. "I have a guide with me when I race-he protects me from trees and stuff - but basically I go as fast as I can. Well, not the whole time. If it's bright and sunny, I hold back some because I'm scared."
Scott, who attends Winamac High School in central Indiana, was born with an eye condition in which her rods and cones never developed. She can see some red and yellow, but mostly just light or dark, and even that through a constrained slot that extends to maybe 10 feet in front of her. She's sensitive to bright light, so in full sun or shape-erasing snow, even the vision she has goes away.
Otherwise, Scott is like any freshman-stretching toward independence while at the same time, wanting to fit in, hang out, and find her place in the headlong charge that is high school social life. (The start of a cross country race is an apt allusion.)
Any sport that involved fast-moving balls- soccer, baseball, volleyball- was out, so Scott started running with her family at age eight. She was a 5K veteran by the time she got to middle school - cross country seemed like a natural choice.
"I figured it was a good opportunity to do something other than school work, and I could be on a team and talk to people," she said.
Scott remembered falling about 30 feet into one of her first middle school cross country races. Remarkably in a sport whose very definition is rough, uneven terrain, that was the only time she's fallen in four years of competitive cross country. She also runs track in the spring, but of course, running on a track is a piece of cake. Though she has a cane, she prefers to navigate the both school hallways and mile repeats at practice on her own or with the subtle help of friends.
But by the time she got to high school, Scott was outrunning those friends. She tried the first high school meet earlier this season on her own, and it didn't go well - she'd been hesitant and her time reflected that. That's when she and her coach decided to take Glenn Bailey up on his offer.
Bailey described himself as a high school runner who left the sport for 25 years and rediscovered it when his own children joined cross country. Bailey's sister was Scott's middle school cross country coach, and his daughter, Blake, is on the Winamac high school team with Scott.
"I had told my sister, the middle school coach, I'd be happy to run with Hannah if they needed me, but she had friends to run with then," Bailey said. "I was standing around right before the second high school meet and Hannah asked me to run with her. I'd never guided before, and didn't really know how much she could see, so it took us a while to figure that out."
At the start, Bailey said he's usually next to or behind Hannah who is, he confirmed, pretty aggressive off the line. Since runners are so close at that point, she can follow the back of the girl in front of her. Once it strings out, Bailey moves up next to Hannah, using verbal cues and holding forearms in bright sunlight or where there are a lot of turns or obstacles.
"Things come up pretty quick, so I try to tell her about turns and whatnot when we're about 30 yards away," said Bailey. "I tried to imagine what that's like for her, and I thought it must be like running at night with just a streetlight. She's got to trust what I tell her; she will hold back when she's unsure. I tell her how far it is up to the top of a hill, when the next turn is coming up, if it's straight and flat, and for how far."
Scott's best for 5K cross country so far is 23:23. Since there are only five girls on the Winamac team, she said that makes her "basically varsity." Scott and her teammates will compete in the Indiana High School Athletic Association Sectional 8 championship meet on Saturday at Logansport.
"My older daughter, who goes to Purdue, said she wanted to run as Hannah's guide one time, but when she heard about her 23:23, she said, 'I don't think I could keep up with her,'" said Bailey.
Even though he wears a bright green t-shirt with GUIDE printed on the front, and race officials are apprised beforehand that there will be a guide runner, Bailey said he's hollered at by officials who think he's an overly enthusiastic coach or parent in nearly every race.
That experience alerted him to the possibility of violating rules inadvertently. "I asked some officials whether what I'm telling Hannah mid-race could be considered coaching," said Bailey. "They [officials] said I can tell her anything I want - it's never been challenged."
The National Federation of State High School Associations does not keep track of the number of visually-impaired high school cross country runners, but Director of Sports Becky Oakes said guides for vision-impaired runners are approved. When state associations ask about training for running guides, Oakes refers them to this video produced by the US Paralympics.
Phil Gardner from the IHSAA said requests from a school district for a visually impaired runner to be able to compete are reviewed by a risk and competition committee. Gardner knew of at least one other visually impaired runner competing in Indiana now.
Last fall, Logan Anderson of Franklin Community High School garnered national headlines when she was cleared by the IHSAA to compete with a guide runner. Anderson, who has since graduated, was rendered nearly blind by Oculocutaneous Albinism, a condition she was born with and one which affects about one in 20,000 people.
Scott and Bailey have found virtually all verbal communication is acceptable, as is holding arms or locking elbows while running. "He just can't pull me along," Scott said.
According to the NFHS, there has never been an incident in which a guide was accused of providing too much assistance.
Scott only uses Bailey's guiding services for meets: at practice, her teammates help her out when needed. She's pretty much memorized Winamac's home cross country course, step by step and turn by turn.
"One thing people don't realize is that she has no idea how far she's gone or at what point in the race she is," said Bailey. "I'll tell her 'Half-mile to go,' or 'Quarter-mile straight ahead, time to go, let's go.' You know, when you can see the finish, you get that boost of energy. She can't see the finish line so I try to get her to feel what I can see, that finish line energy."