Dan Mancina: The blind skateboarder difficult misconceptions about sight and sport

Muricas News  — 

Dan Mancina is a skateboarder whose jaw-dropping movies rack up a whole bunch of 1000's of views.

He has a loyal following on Instagram, all wanting to see him touchdown jumps and all types of skillful methods.

Mancina additionally occurs to be blind – and movies of him utilizing his white cane as he boards evokes curiosity and admiration from followers around the globe.

“I’ve misplaced my imaginative and prescient slowly all through my life,” he informed Muricas News Sport, explaining that it wasn’t till his mid-20s that his situation – a neurodegenerative eye illness known as retinitis pigmentosa – began to have an effect on his dayto-day life, stopping him from driving and biking.

“Finally [I] obtained to the purpose the place I didn’t assume I may depart the home and not using a individual, like a human information or someone, a buddy. I couldn’t even stroll round my very own block and stuff like that,” the 35-year-old added.

“I’m making an attempt to determine “what's a blind individual? What can a blind individual do?”

The Michigan native began skating at seven, however obtained into it extra significantly at 13, growing a love for the game which he says helps him specific himself.

“You are able to do it by your self if you wish to, or with mates, and simply type of be in your individual little world,” he mentioned.

Mancina, who had desires of being a pro-skateboarder, stopped skating for a few years. This era, he mentioned, was his “lowest level.”

However orientation and mobility coaching helped him achieve confidence and, slowly, he returned to doing what he beloved, fishing, spending time open air and, after all, skateboarding.

“I actually thought skateboarding was completed and out of my life and in my previous,” the American, who counts Adidas as considered one of his sponsors, mentioned.

“I didn’t assume I’d find a way get the identical issues out of it that I did once I was sighted, or be capable of actually progress or push myself.”

He began filming brief movies of his progress and posting on Instagram and Youtube and met a brand new group of individuals to skate with, gaining sufficient confidence to return to the streets.

“It simply took me really making an attempt it, and doing it after which realizing I can get these issues out of it,” he added.

“I’m going by way of these realizations about my blindness and myself and realizing: I’m nonetheless the identical individual and I can nonetheless do all of the issues that I like. I simply needed to do them just a little bit completely different.”

Now, Mancina desires to problem misconceptions round blindness and create areas the place visually impaired folks can benefit from the sport.

“I wished to construct the primary totally adaptive skatepark designed round visible impairments, so I began a basis known as ‘Maintain Pushing Integrated’ and have been elevating cash ever since [for] just a few years now,” he mentioned.

The park, set to be inbuilt Mancina’s dwelling state of Michigan, will use adaptive strategies, reminiscent of growing the scale of obstacles, including distinction to obstacles and utilizing auditory cues to make it secure and accessible.

“[The] ledges are actually lengthy and flat bars are actually lengthy, the quarter pipes are actually broad.

“So there’s type of extra time to determine the place you're within the park, discover your means round, simpler to get on and off rails for wheelchairs and utilizing quite a lot of distinction too, is essential for many who have just a little little bit of residual imaginative and prescient between the ramps and the bottom,” he defined.

Mancina has raised round $40,000 for the park, and after pouring concrete this fall, hopes to be working skate workshops by subsequent spring and summer time.

With a spacious structure and tactile floor, Mancina is constructing the park with blind faculties, organizations, rehabilitation facilities, and different adaptive sports activities organizations in thoughts.

“They need to have entry to every thing, identical to each different youngster,” he mentioned. “Skateboarding is simply a type of issues – you recognize, it’s not for everyone, however there are going to be these youngsters who wish to skate.

“I’m honored and hopefully I generally is a voice for our group. That’s why I began my social media stuff, to alter the notion of the visually impaired.

“I seen an enormous distinction in the best way folks handled me as a sighted individual in comparison with a blind individual,” he mentioned, explaining that some folks have decrease expectations of what a blind individual can obtain.

“Some folks assume it’s loopy and never attainable to skate. It’s not that loopy … in my head. It’s simply, I take pleasure in skating. So I’m going to do it. So I encourage folks to assume that means – don’t let different folks dictate your life and determine what you may and might’t do. You understand, it’s all as much as you.”

As for the longer term, Mancina has a lot of plans.

“Primary is simply skating so long as I can and maintain having the ability to stay this life for so long as I can,” he mentioned.

“Maintain filming elements [is goal] primary, after which maintain progressing, all that stuff, after which working in direction of getting skateboarding within the Paralympics.”