Local Woman to Start Adaptive Tennis League

There are no facilities to actively engage the blind in sports in the area, but one woman is working hard to change that.

Jody Silverberg has been a resident of Prince William County for 19 years. She is the appointed president of her chapter of the National Federation of the Blind,  a member of the Out of Sight Dragons and is the upcoming vice president of the Lake Ridge .

All of the organizations Silverberg is a part of help the blind, but she is reaching out in her community to help with a more specific problem: allowing the blind and disabled to play tennis.

“In my research looking for adaptive tennis leagues, there was nothing at all in northern Virginia for any people who need adaptation, so I decided to incorporate the whole thing and make it a true adaptive tennis league,” Silverberg said.

This would accommodate people in wheel chairs, those with arthritis, prosthetic limbs and anyone who needs extra help in order to play.

Silverberg is also hoping to become a tennis coach, so she can use the teaching skills she acquired during her time as a Prince William County educator.

In order to help the visually impaired play tennis, Silverberg is looking to purchase sound-adaptive balls that allow people to hear where they land better than regular tennis balls. She will also have short-handled rackets and have members use a smaller portion of the tennis courts they play on.

“I looked at adaptive tennis leagues throughout the northeast, and anywhere else, and I got this huge roster of people from all over the country with the adaptive tennis and there are lots and lots of things out there, and I only saw one that included the blind, but it was way out in the Midwest somewhere,” she said.

Silverberg went to her Lions Club and talked to someone about where to find funding, and she was directed to the Prince William County Board of Supervisors. When it went before the board, the vote was unanimous and Silverberg received the full amount she asked for to purchase equipment.

“I started playing when my eyes were OK,” said Silverberg, who added 'it was the old lower your blood pressure and cholesterol, and find something that’s active to do" that got her inolved in the sport in the first place.

Although she had never been an athletic person, Silverberg found a friend to play tennis with and started to enjoy it.

“I love it. I absolutely love it, and I still love it, and I don’t want to stop playing just because I couldn’t see,” she said. “I was out playing last week, practicing with him and I was really having a hard time seeing the ball moving, I just cannot see it like I used to.”

Silverberg has Stargardt disease, a macular degeneration, which leads to vision loss. At the moment she is classified as “low vision.” She only realized there was a problem in 2009, when she was watching a movie with her family and noticed it appeared “sideways and squiggly.”

Silverberg had just finished her master’s degree to become a reading specialist when she noticed her vision loss, and she had to take her certification test with a magnifying glass. She has been unemployed for a year and losing her central vision. She doesn’t know how bad it will get, but remains optimistic by helping others in her position be happy. She said she’s learned new skills because of her vision loss and she’s met successful blind people who don’t sit around whining about their eyes.

“These people aren’t disabled,” Silverberg said. “I call them other-abled.”

Because of her new-found difficulties and successes, her life has been changed in a way that she views as positive. In fact, Silverberg’s new life motto is, “Life is not a spectator sport.”

If anyone is interested in joining her adaptive tennis league, she can be reached at jody4tennis@gmail.com.