This month we want to highlight Brandon Joy, age 20, and the incredible work he continues to do to bring more Blind Hockey awareness to Eastern Canada!
Learn about the impact of Blind Hockey in Brandon’s own words:
“I was diagnosed when I was 3. My family and I were out camping, and my dad and I were playing around with a football at dusk and I kept getting hit in the face with the ball. A big factor of RP is night vision loss and I was diagnosed after a bunch of tests. Back in 2016 or so, I was technically deemed legally blind, I was in grade 8. My vision has gotten worse over time but it’s stable now. I was playing regular hockey up until about 2 or 3 years ago when I outgrew the minor hockey team in my town. Now all I play is Blind Hockey.
After development camp in 2017, my father and I realized there’s probably more people in Newfoundland who need the opportunity of Blind Hockey but don’t even know it’s an option so we started up our program, the Newfoundland Eyelanders that year. We pride ourselves on trying to make it as accessible as possible. In May 2023, we went to Charlottetown in PEI and we held the first Try It session there because PEI is the only province without a program.
Blind Hockey means a lot to me, it’s basically restructured my entire lift at this point, with about 25 hours of training a week, whether it’s strength and conditioning or practicing. It makes me feel more optimistic about the future, because I know there are more accessible sports being created for people with visual impairments. I have a lot of hope for the future.
My hope for the future, personally, is to be on Team Canada, I’ve been working extremely hard and working towards that, it is my end goal.
For our team and the community, I hope it grows into a larger more accessible sport and more people get the opportunity to play Blind Hockey.”
