EP#17- Disability Does Not Mean Inability with Eliana Mason, Team USA Goallball Paralympic Athlete

(gentle music) I grew up being like, I have a vision disability, so how am I gonna do this? Like, just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong. That was Ilyana Mason. Ilyana is not only a Paralympic athlete representing Team USA in the sport of goal ball, but she's also my cousin, which is pretty cool. Ilyana won a bronze medal at the Rio 2016 Paralympics and is now training to compete in the Tokyo games and she's also in school to become a mental health counselor for disabled individuals. In this episode, Ilyana and I chat about mental health and disability in sports and how she's managed to stay positive and not let her visual impairment get in the way of achieving her goals and living a purposeful life. Before we dive into our chat, this episode is sponsored by Inker. (gentle music) Hi, Ilyana, thanks so much for coming on to the podcast today. Hi, Stella, thank you so much for having me. Can we start off by having you tell us who you are and what you do? Yes, so my name is Ilyana Mason and I am a Paralympic goal ball athlete, goal ball is a sport for blind and visually impaired athletes. I'm also in grad school working towards my masters in clinical mental health counseling. That's amazing. How many years left you have of school at the moment? So in my final stretch, I have finished all my classwork and now all I have left is internship hours because of COVID that got a little messed up but essentially I will be done next December with having 1,000 supervised internship hours under my belts. Wow, I know COVID has really kind of screwed up a lot of schedules but so exciting that you're still on track to graduate and you just have like this final stretch left. I wanna get a little bit more into the future of you becoming a mental health counselor a little bit later in the episode but I know that you're a Paralympic athlete, you won the bronze medal at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games which is incredible and I'm really curious to hear more about how you got interested in playing goal ball. Yeah, definitely. So thank you so much by the way. It was incredible to win a bronze but we were training so hard for that gold medal for the Tokyo 2020 Games coming up this summer. But a little context, goal ball is a sport for blind and visually impaired athletes and it was developed after World War II for blinded bets as a rehabilitation sport. It was inducted as a Paralympic sport in 1976. And essentially goal ball is not like any sport you've ever heard of. So if you're sitting there thinking, what is goal ball like? It's not like anything you know. It's on a volleyball size court nine by 18 meters. The ball is three pounds and has bells in it. There's three players on each side and the defending team is trying to use their body to block the ball from getting to the goal and the offensive team is throwing the ball about 35, 40 miles an hour to try to score past the team. And the most important thing that I always forget to mention is every athlete is wearing eye shades to black out any vision. So no matter what your level of visual limitation is, you're completely equalized on a playing field. So instead of hand eye coordination, you're using hand ear coordination in our sport. Wow, so you're really, you're really kind of utilizing other senses in order to play the game because everyone is equally, you know, the blindfold is on everyone. So they're equally not able to see anything. Absolutely. So the court is stringed with tape over it so you can feel where you're at it all times and that's how you orient players orient themselves. And then the ball has bells in it. So you're listening to it. You have about a second of reaction time or less and then you're diving out, putting your body between the goal and the ball going into the goal. And if you've ever seen rugby, sometimes we say it looks like a scrum at the back of the net, we're all diving to try to block that ball, but there is a method to the madness. So it is organized chaos to say the least, but it's amazing because vision is eliminated and so you can be an athlete first and just play the game that you love and not worry about any visual limitations or barriers or anything, putting you at a disadvantage visually. So goal ball, I mean, to be a Paralympic athlete is an incredible commitment and huge time commitment, physical commitment. How did you decide that you wanted to pursue this path in life? - Yeah, well, I'm very competitive. I'm the only girl in the middle of two brothers. So nothing more needs to be said there. And I grew up loving sports and never being able to compete the way I wanted to. I love soccer, but by the time I'd see the ball, it was kicked away. And I just remember getting so angry and just wanting to sit down in the middle of the field 'cause I couldn't track the ball. I tried other sports like track and they were fun, but I wanted a team sport and I wanted a contact high intensity competitive sport. I discovered goal ball when I was about 15 or 16 and not gonna lie, didn't love it at first. I don't, you know, getting a three pound ball thrown at you as hard as you can can kind of be a little intimidating. But I was very adventurous and always loved to try new things. And I went to my first youth tournament in Florida and fell in love with the competition, with the environment, with meeting other goal ball athletes. And I decided my senior high school that I wanted to make a Paralympic team that I wanted to compete in goal ball in the Paralympics and represent Team USA. And from that point, it just became about like pushing myself and the drive and determination and following through with training, with nutrition, with working out, with practice, with making commitments, with missing important events in my life to go to these tournaments and prioritize winning and trying to be the best and so making the Rio 2016 Paralympic team was incredible and amazing and it just left me wanting more. Like I said, bronze is great, but gold is the goal. - Right, and well, I mean, Tokyo is coming up in 2021, this upcoming year. I guess when this episode will be released, it will be 2021. So later in this year, which is crazy, how are you feeling about the Tokyo Olympics? - I'm feeling really rejuvenated and excited when COVID hit, it was definitely a blow. It was devastating for everybody, for the sports, Paralympic and Olympic world in particular. We were less than 200 days out and then all of a sudden it's pushed a whole year. So that takes a lot of rearranging, re-planning, everything we do was to peak in August of 2020. So we had to recalibrate and we have, and we're about to hit 2021 and we're gonna hit the ground running and we are training and we're working hard and we're excited. We're ready to jump back in and try to achieve that goal that we still have. - How did you deal with the stress that came with finding out that the Olympic Games are gonna be postponed and pushed? You're training so hard, the sport requires you to be so disciplined, so on top of it, so focused and really build resilience. How are you able to bounce back from that setback? - Yeah, everyone always says, find the silver lining and I think there's a lot of truth to that, but also it's a balance. We've gotta let yourself feel the feelings. Everyone lost something this year and so we can all connect that way of realizing everyone's life has been thrown upside down and whatever plan you had, no one got it achieved. So there's some connection with everyone going through that, but then there's also the uniqueness of everyone having their own thing they're working through. And so I think it's important to let yourself feel that frustration or that irritation or that devastation of what you had not working out and then figuring out so what can I gain from this? I gotta spend the summer instead of training all summer, I gotta be in Oregon, gotta see my baby niece walk for the first time, which was incredible. There's a lot of things I got from this year that I'm gonna take with me. And in terms of sports, I gotta lecture your training. Like you can't complain about that. It gives me another year to be better. So another year to just keep pushing and working hard and it gives our whole team that time to keep growing, keep connecting, keep bonding, keep working hard. And so while we all handled it in our own way, we also all came together and we're like, we want this and we're gonna make it happen. - Yeah, I mean, that's a really optimistic way to reframe everything that's happened this past year in 2020. And I think that's such an important mindset to adopt because now more than ever, we've realized just how uncertain things are in life. We never really know what's gonna happen next. And just being able to stay in that present moment and be agile knowing that if something comes your way that you're not expecting, you can tackle that with confidence and with conviction as well in order to move forward and pave a more optimistic path and take something from that experience. - Yes, it's really important to be resilient, that something I've learned on a personal level and on a professional level from majoring in mental health counseling is so often we wanna bury our own feelings because it's like someone else could have it worse. I shouldn't feel bad 'cause I still have a roof over my head. I still have food. And while it's good to be humble, that line of thinking makes us feel like suffocated because then we can't have our own feelings. And so instead of saying butt or or it's and and that's what I've really learned in my program, this is a hard situation and it could be worse. And so you're giving yourself that space for your own feelings and also recognizing other others experiences out there as well. - That's a really great point and I've never heard of that before like instead of butt or it's and kind of just building on the experience that you're already describing. I think mental health is so personal like no one can really get inside of your head and understand exactly what you're thinking or exactly what you're feeling. and there shouldn't really be a need to kind of compare or size up any of the challenges that you're facing against what other people's experiences are. Exactly. Your experiences are real and they're valid and so they need to be treated with care for yourself. Yeah. That's really great advice and I'm sure your studies have really helped to bring that more to light. And I also want to circle back more into your childhood. You're very athletic growing up and you also have grown up and are visually disabled and I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about what your visual disability is and how it's impacted your mindset on athleticism and growing up navigating those challenges. Yeah. So to explain vision, I want to start off by saying it's a spectrum. So often people expect you to either be cited or blind in anything in between they don't understand. And so it's important to realize just like any type of impairment vision impairment comes in all different like this like all different diseases or forms and it's it's also different. And so my vision impairment is going to be so different than any other person you encounter. So acuity acuity is how far you can see 2020 is the gold standard. My acuity is 2300 meaning what you can see from 300 feet away. I have to be 20. So you have to be you to be like really close to an object in order to be able really close in order to be able to foot like fully see it or just make out maybe like the shape or color. Exactly. And so another thing people always assume if you're like blind or visually impaired than your color blind. I'm not I can match colors very well. Thank you. I just got to be close to them. So that is important to realize I don't have any vision in my left eye. So all I can see is out of my right eye. And then so you have acuity and then you have field and field is like the degrees of vision. That you're that's basically your peripheral. And so my field is pretty limited. The best way I can explain it is if I'm looking straight. I can't see side to side or up and down. I have to be like physically turn my head to see what's around me. And so it makes functional vision very hard like to just glimpse things out of the corner of your eye. Like I don't understand that phrase. What is the corner of your eye. I don't know. But um so it's kind of like like tunnel vision like when horses have like those I don't even know what they're called like the binders or whatever on the side of there. Exactly. Exactly. I got the tunnel vision. That's exactly what it's called. So my vision is pretty limited. I also explain to people like if I'm looking at them. I can see your face. I can see your hair color. But I can't see the color of your eyes. So it's like details are kind of lost. Um on on me. So that's my vision. But like I said every and visually impaired individual has a different. Um I condition or reason and the way to fix them is so different. And for me, I was born with my eye condition. And so like with anything there's pros and cons to any situation. Being born with my eye condition means I don't know anything differently. So I didn't know I was blind to tell us five years old which might sound funny. But when you're a little kid you don't realize differences. You think everyone sees the way you do. It wasn't housing kindergarten and the teacher kept talking about the board. And I'm sitting there. I'm like what is the board? Like what is this board she's talking about like the white board like the board. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea. Like. Because she kept pointing at it. I couldn't see it. And so like everyone obviously in my family knew I was blind. But like my five year old self was like, oh everyone sees the way I do it. Like what's the difference. So because it's always been what I've known when people say like, oh well, what can you see? I just like want to say, well, what can you see? I don't know how to compare it. Because all I know is what I know. So that is, you know, in a way I've never had to adjust. I think losing vision later in life poses a whole different set of adjustment. So that's that's something. But you know, it is hard being the only visually impaired child and a family of three kids trying to keep up with my brothers and having like barriers or limitations. My family was really great. We got like tandem bikes and we, you know, they included mean everything that they could, but they're still that feeling of otherness and different. And so getting involved with adaptive sports and specifically goal ball really was the beginning of my confidence because I was for once an athlete first and I could be. I could just be myself and not have to try so hard to just be on the same playing field as everybody else around me. Yeah, I mean, obviously like I know your immediate family because where cousins were related and I know that they've always been so amazing as you've described me in the past, it like never really put thoughts into your head that like you couldn't achieve something because of your visual disability. Yeah, they've always, you know, my parents treated me the same as my brother. So I didn't grow up thinking like, oh, I have a vision disability. I can't do this. I grew up being like, I have a vision disability. So how am I going to do this? Like just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong. And so I just learning to adapt or accommodate and try to do everything I can. The biggest thing I can't do is drive like that's never happening. That's okay. I've accepted it. That's totally okay. I don't even know how to drive and I feel like so many people don't even know how to do exactly like there's out there. There's accommodations. I mean, waiting for that self-driving car, not going to lie and get to be first in life. But the point is like most things in life you can adapt or accommodate. And so that's important to me that people understand that just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong. And another amazing thing you've said to me in the past is that disability does not mean inability. I think so often we associate disability with incompetence or inability or like we just see what people aren't capable of instead of looking at everything they still are capable of doing. It's important to me that we kind of start acknowledging this and changing the culture around disability and not assuming what people's capabilities are but letting them show you, ask them, let them teach you what they can do and don't just assume. So often I travel a lot for global. I've been all over the world for this sport. And sometimes I travel alone. And when I do that, I have to ask for assistance at the airport because I can't see where the gates are. And they always try to like want to move, like take me in a wheelchair and I'm like, I can walk, I just can't see. And I have to explain that every time. And then they'll try to take me to the elevator. I'm like, I can do stairs, I can do an escalator. I just can't see. And I have to constantly continuously explain this. And instead of them asking me, they're just assuming, oh, she can't see, then she can't do X, Y or Z. And so that needs to be changed. Yeah, and I'm sure like those situations are really frustrating where you you feel maybe that people are just assuming things about you because of this one disability. And in times like that, like how do you, how do you remain calm and stay positive and move forward from that? Like how do you adopt a better mindset from those frustrating conversations? I think it depends on the day. Some days I'm like patient and I just like I'm going to educate you. Sometimes I'm just exhausted and it's like, just take me to the stairs. Like I just, I'm not in the mood to educate. And so it really depends. I think on my mood. And I wish I could tell you every time I encounter someone who is unsure or unaware ignorant, I'm patient and kind. But like I'm also human and I like get exhausted of like, educate yourself. Like I shouldn't be your only exposure to disability at times. And I think it depends on how people approach me as well too. As I mentioned vision loss is a spectrum. And so I describe my vision to you. So with my phone, my font is huge. And I have to hold it pretty close to my face. But I can read my font. And so if I'm out and about and I have my cane, which identifies me as someone who's visually impaired and people see me on my phone, I've literally had people accuse me of faking my blindness because I'm looking at my phone seriously. Yes, absolutely. I had this whole conversation with this person who is like, you're faking your blindness for attention. And like, hey, who would do that and be like, why would someone do that? I would rather not be blind. I mean, I'd rather just get in the car and drive. But like this is the hand I was dealt. So I'm making the best of it. But if someone were to say to me, oh, I notice you can't see, but you seem to look at your phone. Can you explain that to me? Sure. Let me tell you. But if you're going to come up to me and be like, why are you looking at your phone if you can't see, then it's like, well, who are you to make these assumptions and these judgments? So I think it's important to just recognize how do you approach someone being unaware or having questions is so normal. There's so many things I'm uneducated about and I don't know and probably have offended someone in my life. And you know, would want to learn more. So it's not, you know, it's not a bad thing if you don't know. It's how do you approach someone? How do you talk to them? How do you educate yourself and learn more? Yeah, that's so important. And I'm so glad you bring that up. And apart from constantly educating able-bodied individuals, how can we empower those who are facing disabilities? And how can able-bodied people be better allies to those who have experienced any sort of disability? I think you like you meant like you said like the education and then I think just awareness and I think constantly checking our own biases and our own assumptions. If we encounter someone who is hearing impaired, don't yell at them. Don't talk slower. Just speak to them. And they'll tell you like, oh, I'm sorry. Can you do this? People will let you know what they need. So have faith and confidence in people with disabilities that they're going to advocate for themselves. And so unless they tell you otherwise, treat them the way you would treat anybody else. And then if they say, oh, actually, I'm visually impaired, can I guide off of you? Or, oh, actually, can we do this because I like have like a muscle, you know, impairment and I can't do it. can't go this route or I can't do these stairs. Have faith in trusting people that they will advocate for what they need. And until then, don't assume for them what they need. - Yeah, that's huge. And I think a lot of people, obviously, it's human nature to just make assumptions. That's kind of how our brain is wired. But obviously in this instance or in this case, it's so important to take a step back and just treat others how you would treat anyone else. Just treat people with human decency in respect. - Yes, with respect, kindness and dignity. And I really want to hone into that, it's okay if you don't know or understand. Like I said, there's a lot of things I'm constantly educating myself on. So it's not that it's like you're wrong if you don't know. It's just about what's your approach to then learn. What do better be better? How are you going to accomplish that? - Definitely. I want to move a little bit more into now that you're in school, finishing up your studies to be a mental health counselor. How do you think that your experiences with your visual impairment and being a professional athlete have shaped your journey now to become a mental health counselor and what you hope to achieve in the future? - Yeah, well, I think being a professional or like an athlete training for the Paralympics, it takes so much determination and work ethic. And there's days where like I feel like I'm plateauing, there's days where I have a terrible practice and I like leave the court and tears. And I'm just like, this is awful. And you have to keep pushing through. And so I can take a lot of the skills I've learned from being an athlete and put them towards being a student or being a professional on my resume. I talk about being an athlete because it's taught me core skills and values in the workplace. You're gonna have a bad day at work or you're gonna have people in the workplace you don't get along with. Just like sometimes on your team, you might have people you disagree with. And so you need to learn how to be a good teammate and work with others, same in the workplace. You need to learn how to be a good coworker and work with others. So I've had a lot of transferable skills from being an athlete that I'm taking with me into my career. In terms of how my career has been shaped by my life, I feel like mental health is an undervalued field. And I feel like disability and mental health are two passions of mine. So if I can bring those together and be like an advocate and like a mental health counselor who specializes in disability counseling, then like how amazing is that to like bring my passions together and make a positive impact in the life of others? And be that person that I didn't have growing up. Be someone that individuals who will have disabilities and also may benefit from mental health counseling can come to and I can be like a safe, positive place for them to like work through what they need to with someone who can relate to what it's like having a disability. So bringing my passions together is what really makes me feel like fulfilled and like motivated for like my career. - That's the sweet spot being able to bring your passions together and really follow what you're interested in and stay true to what your passions are and bring them together in a way that you can pursue it professionally and also keep doing what you like for fun and find joy and fulfillment out of that. I'm so excited for you. I'm really excited to see all the amazing things that you're going to do in the mental health field and I agree with you. I think there's a huge stigma around mental health and there's a lack of awareness and education around disability. And that's why I'm so happy to have you on this podcast and to chat about your experience playing goal ball competing at the Rio 2016 Olympics and winning bronze and I know now that Tokyo is coming up how is training been, how have things been going so far getting ready for Tokyo? - Yeah, training's been good. We kind of just reworked our training schedule and we're working to like I said, be at our top peak in August and everyone is just going to think very like motivated and rejuvenated and like ready, we're ready for Tokyo. So we just want to make sure that like we are like physically, emotionally, mentally, like, cohesively, like we want to do everything in our power to be as ready as possible for this event we've been training for for the past four years now. - Yeah, that's real determination and discipline. So I don't know if they're going to have spectators, fingers crossed. - Yeah, we'll see. - And I really quickly just want to throw out the Olympic games and then you have the Paralympic games. goal ball is a Paralympic sport and Paralympics are for any athlete with a physical impairment. So there are 22 Paralympic sports and that's where you'd find sports as wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, sitting volleyball, there's archery, pariswimming, paratrac, parapsychling in all those sports, they all have able-bodied partner sport except goal ball. As I mentioned, it was created in World War II as an adaptive sport. And so in its essence, the sport is adaptive, which is really cool on one hand, but then also makes it difficult because then everyone's like, well, what is goal ball like? And I'm like, well, it's its own sport. It's not like any able-bodied sport you know of. And so trying to just promote awareness on adaptive sports, disability sports, and like raise awareness on goal ball. I didn't learn about it. Tell us 15 and I was born blind. So it also is a passion of mine to work with youth. I work at youth camps teaching goal ball, promoting the sport and getting as many kids aware and involved with it as possible because it is not as known about as it should be. So trying to raise awareness. So just wanted to make the distinction Paralympics and then you have Olympics and the Paralympics are held a couple weeks after the Olympic Games, same village, same village, same venues, we train at the Olympic Training Center. It's all one cohesive unit. So you have the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. So just wanted to raise some awareness on Paralympics at the same time. - Thank you for sharing that because I'm not sure that many of my listeners might know what the distinction is either. So I think it's so important to spread awareness about that. Is there any like social media handle or website that we can follow along your journey or anything that you might share and post about your training and goal ball? - We have Facebook and Instagram for both USA Women's goal ball and USA Men's goal ball. And those are like the biggest handles to follow for Instagram, oh, and Twitter. So Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, we have the USA Women's team and then the USA Men's team. And then my personal Instagram is just my first name and middle name, Ilyana Marie. - Awesome, well thank you. If people wanna go follow, they can go check you out at Ilyana Marie and also the USA Women and Men's goal ball team on Facebook and Twitter. Before I let you go and I'm so happy that you came on to everyday endorphins. This is one question that I ask every single guest on the podcast, what is something that brings you endorphins every day? - Going on walks honestly. I have learned to love walks and I feel like that's very generic and basic, but it's just a used to feel frustrated having to walk to get from A to B 'cause they can't drive and this pandemic has really made me slow down and appreciate being outside and taking the fresh air and walking. And so just going on walks now is really refreshing and reframed how I feel and I enjoy it every day going outside on a walk train or shine or snow when I'm in Fort Wayne and it's freezing. - Yeah, even just like a five, 10 minute refresher, it can do wonders. I've been going on a lot of walks also 'cause again, there's also like not a lot to do these days socially, but I love that answer and I think it's really always in the small moments or the small tiny choices that we make that can really have a great impact on our mental and physical well-being. - Yes. - Thank you again so much, Aliana. It was great to have you on the podcast today. - Yeah, thank you for having me. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)