For Williston Park native Jaclyn Smith, a vision problem that prevents her from driving and participating in some sports has become an opportunity in her favorite sport of rowing.
Smith, who is entering her junior year at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. this fall, will compete on the U.S. Para-Rowing National Team at the 2013 World Championships in South Korea on Aug. 26-29. The Para-Rowing Team is comprised of amputees and athletes with neurological or visual impairments.
“At first it was a little overwhelming,” she said of her selection to the team. “I’m excited now, happy to go out there for the national team.”
At Sacred Heart, Smith has competed – and excelled – as an able-bodied rower, winning the MAAC conference pairs championship this past spring.
Smith first became aware of the team comprised of athletes with disabilities when her coach told her about it last spring.
She said her coach, Nicoletta Mantescu, did most of the research and processed the required paperwork to validate her participation.
The biggest adjustment she had to make was the requirement that she row blindfolded, to even the playing field for those with more serious visual impairments.
“You need to focus more,” she said, describing the use of a blindfold as “a big psychological adjustment.”
In regular rowing competition, a rower can visually maintain a rhythm with other rowers so that all oars are hitting the water at the same time. When blindfolded, Smith said, she has to rely on someone in a boat behind her to maintain proper pace when competing individually. In team competition, a coxswain verbally directs all the rowers to keep them in sync.
She entered her first adaptive competition in the Bayada Regatta in Philadelphia last August. In the individual competition, she finished first by a full minute over a distance of 1,000 meters.
“That’s how my name kind of got out,” Smith said.
She was subsequently contacted by coaches for the para-rowing national team to come to the LTA Para-Rowing Camp this year in May.
She spent six days there working out, observed by coaches who then invited her to a selection camp in late June in Boston and was chosen for the four-person LTA 4+ team. Smith will go to Boston on July 22 for a month of training prior to the world championships.
She said she never expected to make the national team, and said the experience feels like being in a “whirlwind.”
“All my life all I wanted to do was be as normal as the next kid. Looking back, this disability has provided a lot of opportunities for me that I wouldn’t have had if I didn’t have it,” Smith said.
Smith was born with a condition called ocular albinism. She is legally blind and her eyes are sensitive to light.
But she found an athletic niche in rowing while attending high school at Our Lady of Mercy Academy in Syosset.
Growing up in an athletic-oriented family, she has played softball, basketball, volleyball and soccer, but sports involving balls always presented problems because of a 20-200 vision that hurt her depth perception.
“When I heard they had rowing, it didn’t involve a ball, so I went for it,” Smith said.
She continued rowing as a freshman on the Sacred Heart team competes as an NCAA Division I level in the MAAC Conference. She further developed her skills in the sport under the guidance of her Sacred Heart coach, who led the Roumanian men’s rowing team to Olympic gold in the 1996 summer games.
“I had a great coach. She took the time to make sure I understood what she was saying, what I needed to work on,” Smith said.
She said she took to the demanding physical aspect of the sport that required more of her than any other sport she’d every tried.
“It’s a push sport,” she said. “You have to push your legs, push yourself, push your teammates, push your limits. A sprint in rowing is not like a sprint in other sports.”
Her father, Jim Smith, a former chief in the Williston Park Fire Department, said he’s proud of his daughter’s accomplishment.
Jim Smith, who grew up in Floral Park and was formerly a member of that village’s fire department, will be attending the South Korea competition with his wife, Ann Marie, a lifelong Williston Park resident.
“She put her whole heart into it. She’s very dedicated to it,” he said of his daughter. “When she puts her ming to something, she goes all out.”
At Sacred Heart, Smith is putting her mind to work in an accelerated five-year program to earn a master’s degree in elementary education. She said she aspires to become a guidance counselor.
“I always felt that growing up my teachers had the biggest influence on me – or the least,” she said, adding that she preferred those teachers who treated who as though she had no disability.
As Smith prepares to leave for Boston, she’s working as an attendant at the Roger Fay Pool in Williston Park for the fifth summer.
When she’s been home on breaks from college, she’s also helps coach her high school team.
She said she prefers rowing without a blindfold, but she sees the South Korea competition as an experience that will improve her skills as captain of her college rowing team.
She said she’s a bit “nervous” about the upcoming competition as the youngest member of the four-person team. But she’s determined to help the USA para-rowing team top its sixth place finish among 12 teams in last year’s world competition.
“That’s not good enough this year,” Smith said.
