Blind bowls player Julie doesn’t let sight loss get in her way
BOWLER Julie Thomas may not be able to see but she can sense her opponents’ reaction as soon as she sets foot on the green.
“I love the terrifying factor,” said the 50-year-old.
“I step on to the green with no sight with players that are sighted and they think ‘Oh God, we haven’t got her have we?.’
“People used to think: ‘This is going to be a piece of cake.’
“Now they say: ‘We’ve got the A team.”
The three-times British sightimpaired champion from Bridgend even got the better of sighted world indoor champion and women’s singles “champion of champions” Laura Daniels, from Neath, in one competition.
“I beat her in every single end,” said Julie, from Brackla, who has been selected for the Welsh para bowls team for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia.
“I think she thought she should win and psyched herself out. When people get to know me they don’t do that.”
Julie plays at high levels in both sighted and visually-impaired competitions, travelling across the UK and the world to compete.
But she only picked up her first bowl three years ago, seven years after suffering sudden and unexpected sight loss.
“I thought I just had viral conjunctivitis and it deteriorated very quickly,” said Julie, a mum of two.
“I lost it to a level where I could just see blurry outlines and shapes and then it went completely.
“They didn’t know what it was. It’s always been unexplained sight loss.”
Two years of visits to consultants brought no more answers. But last year, after an operation to treat cataracts unrelated to her sight loss, the surgeon suggested it might be cortical blindness, caused by damage to the brain. Losing her sight meant Julie had to give up her dream job as head teacher at a primary school in the Rhondda.
“It was completely life-changing obviously,” she said. “It was very traumatic. I was driving a car and doing everything myself and then you can’t do all the things that people take for granted like picking out clothes or brushing your teeth. You can’t find the toothbrush.
“One of the most devastating things for me is that I can’t see the faces of my children. The last time I saw them they were eight and nine and now they are 18 and 19.
“You either give up or get on with it and when you have young children you have to get on with it.”
Julie threw herself into running her own charity for the visually impaired but admits that at the time she was “pretending everything was okay”.
“But one of the things we decided to do was try out different sports. I tried bowls and I was completely, absolutely, hooked.”
At Swansea Indoor Bowls Club, Julie, who can only see light and dark, met coach John Wilson.
“John kept saying I was good but I thought he was just being nice,” she said.
“Then I won the Welsh Championship within two months and he said ‘Do you believe me now?.’”
John, who is also the manager for the Welsh Para Bowls Team, said he saw something of himself in Julie.
“In many ways I play my bowls through her. We have the same style,” said the 64-year-old from Swansea.
“I have been on a quest from day one. I don’t recognise disabilities and visually-impaired bowlers – I see people and I want them to be totally integrated.”
Julie now plays at club, county and country level indoors and outdoors and practises with John in Swansea four or five times a week.
They have developed a remarkable system where John will tell Julie approximately how far away the jack is and then, through repeated practice and “muscle memory”, Julie will bowl to that length.
John tells Julie where her bowls have ended up by using a “clock face” method. The jack is the centre of the clock so if she has bowled too short and to the right that is five o’clock and she can then adjust accordingly.
“It’s completely transformed my life. I have something to focus on,” said Julie.
“I was looking for something that made me feel like I had a value and a purpose. I think it’s a brilliant thing and if I could see I would never have tried bowls. I wouldn’t have given it a thought.
“It’s opened up the world to me. I have travelled across Britain and to Australia.
“It’s a real leveller. You can play against a youngster and they can beat you and someone in their 80s or 90s can beat you.”