(L-R) liana Mason, Amanda Dennis and Lisa Czechowski compete during the women's goalball preliminary round against Team Brazil at the Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 on Aug. 25, 2021 in Chiba, Japan.
Amanda Dennis is still young.
She’s only 28, in the prime of her goalball career, and one of the key athletes to watch at the IBSA Goalball World Championships that started Thursday in Matosinhos, Portugal.
But Dennis is also a veteran of the sport, having been a fixture for Team USA since she was a teenager. Since making her Paralympic debut at the Paralympic Games London 2012, the Peachtree City, Georgia, native has won Paralympic bronze (2016) and silver (2020) medals, to go along with a world title from 2014.
Goalball is a team sport for athletes who are visually impaired. Two teams of three line up in front of goals that span the width of the court, with the object being to throw the ball past your opponent into the opposing net.
Having played goalball since she was introduced as a 7-year-old at a sports education camp, Dennis has embraced what the sport has given her and is now giving back to it on and off the court for her country.
With goalball, she said, “You got to choose yourself how good you want to be.”
“Your entire life, people will tell you, ‘Use your vision, use your vision,’ and then you play goalball and they take it away basically,” she said, referring to the blackout goggles athletes wear to ensure equity. “It’s an equalized playing field where you are playing with your peers, and you have the decision to be as good or as bad as you want.
“I remember seeing these athletes that went to the Paralympics Games and I said, ‘Wow, I want to be like that someday,’” Dennis continued. “And I always had that dream to represent USA at the Paralympic Games. So now that I’m in that spot and I can motivate others, and I can lead and show people coming into the sport now of what that can lead to.”
The youth national championships for goalball recently named the tournament MVP award after Dennis, recognizing what she’s done for the sport.
“Honestly I was really surprised, because there are so many really great athletes in goalball, and I still feel really young,” Dennis said. “When they said that to me it was an honor, and it was really cool. I just think of myself as Amanda, nothing else, so it was really shocking to have an award named after me.”
