J.W. Smith has attended Ohio basketball games for the better part of the past 15 years, yet he has never seen a single shot.
The associate communications professor was there when Gary Trent helped power Ohio to a Mid-American Conference Championship and was in his office later that season when Trent told him that he would forgo his senior season and enter the NBA Draft.
He was there, in the second row at the 2005 MAC Championship, getting hugs from the team after Leon Williams' tip-in at the buzzer sent the Bobcats dancing.
He's there at just about every Bobcat home game with his 14-year-old daughter, Joshelyn ' or any other Ohio fan willing to go with him ' sitting as close as possible to the floor with the voice of play-by-play announcer Warren Swain humming through his headphones.
The 49-year-old has, and will continue, to go to Bobcat games ' despite the fact that he's been blind since he was three.
I love the sounds
said Smith, who was born with infantile glaucoma in one eye and later lost the vision in his other eye after an accident. Even though I can't physically see I love the sounds of the ball on the court the whistles and the hits on the field.
To hear (former Bobcats' announcer) Derek Scott
or somebody
announce a play and then feel it and hear it at the same time
it's pretty cool.
Smith admits, though, that he wasn't exactly in a hurry to add Ohio to his list of favorite teams when he arrived in Athens 16 years ago. Growing up in a non-sports family, Smith learned to love sports on his own.A die-hard Chicago Cubs fan, he began following the Indiana Hoosiers while attending the university in the late '70s.
So when Smith came to Athens, he was less than enthralled with the athletic landscape. That was until Trent took one of his classes during the team's MAC championship run in the 1994-95 season.
The first few years I was here
I was like
'It's all right
' Smith said. (But) when you have somebody in your class like that
and you have a season like that
and to just get to watch that
