Benedictine sophomore Matthew Gavin has embraced Goalball, a sport for the visually impaired

Matthew Gavin was born with a rare genetic disorder, a type of cone-rod dystrophy that gradually took away his sight - leading to total blindness. Now a 16-year-old sophomore at Benedictine, where he is a 4.0 student, Gavin has always been an enthusiastic athlete as he grew up playing sports such as wrestling, jujitsu, flag football and even tackle football for a year at Saint Peter the Apostle Catholic School on Wilmington Island. But when he completely lost his sight, Gavin discovered Goalball, a Paralympic sport that started in the 1940s to help visually impaired war veterans. It has been a mainstay in the Paralympics since the 1976 Summer Games. Two teams of three players try to score by throwing a ball into the other teams' goals, which is nine meters wide. The ball is the size of a basketball and filled with bells, which allows the players to detect it by sound. Defenders dive to block shots with their bodies, making for an action-packed game of skill and strategy.

Matthew's parents, Michelle and Rob Gavin, have always encouraged their son to live life to the fullest, and he has embraced that philosophy. "When he was younger, Matthew could see things up close, he could watch TV up close and walk regularly without a cane, but couldn’t distinguish things far away," Michelle Gavin said. "When he was 11 he lost vision in one eye, and we feared that he would probably lose it in both eyes — and he did.  He was completely blind by 12, but once he found Goalball, he was like 'This is my thing.' "