Photo: Suzanne Sausville/WBZ NewsRadio
WATERTOWN, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Two Boston Bruins players tried their luck at a different kind of team sport Friday.
Center Matt Poitras and defenseman Parker Wotherspoon visited the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown to play with the school's goalball team, the TowerHawks.
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Goalball is played on a volleyball-sized court with three players protecting a goal on each side. Players attempt to roll a ball past the opposing team into the goal. Every player is blindfolded no matter the degree of their vision, all of the markings on the court are tactile, and the ball has bells inside it.
"It’s them learning another sport, like we sometimes learn how to do adapted sports for us, they’re adapting to our sport and learning it for them," TowerHawks player Kyle Butt said before the game.
1 of 4 Photo: Suzanne Sausville/WBZ NewsRadio
2 of 4 Photo: Suzanne Sausville/WBZ NewsRadio
3 of 4 Photo: Suzanne Sausville/WBZ NewsRadio
4 of 4 Photo: Suzanne Sausville/WBZ NewsRadio
Butt told WBZ NewsRadio that he wasn't too worried playing against the Bruins.
"This is a sport that we are more dominant in, so as long as you throw it hard, I think you can get it past them," Butt said.
Indeed, Poitras and Wotherspoon were not as adapt to the blindfolded sport as they are to the hockey rink, with the ball sailing past them several times.
"I was not playing well," Poitras said after the game was over. "It’s hard to find the line. I was trying to find where the line was so I could reestablish myself, but I didn’t know where I was."
WBZ's Suzanne Sausville (@WBZSausville) reports.
