This week, I’m going to be the guest writer for this blog. I am an internationally-ranked soccer player, and I’m going to tell you all about something you’ve probably never heard a sports player talk about in detail: our ventures in optometry. Recently, I’ve noticed that my vision is a little bit off every time I’m on the field. Sometimes, when I go to kick the ball, my foot misses completely. It’s not because I’m not talented; after all, I am one of the world’s best soccer players, but I decided it has something to do with my depth perception.
My coach asked me to visit a behavioural optometrist to get my eyes checked as soon as possible. If I can’t correctly track the one moving object I am meant to track (a soccer ball!) then my career is going to be over very quickly. Because my schedule is so busy, it was very difficult to find a time that would suit both me and my whole team to visit the optometrist’s office. Since I am so talented, I have a whole group of people on my team to help me with things like answering phones and cooking only the best food for me. My personal assistant was the one who ended up scheduling my appointment at the optometrist. Specifically, we went to see a Bayside eye doctor, since this particular optometry clinic housed the best optometrist in all of Melbourne. She is renowned for working with sportspeople, and as soon as I started speaking to her I could understand why. She was very efficient, inspecting my eyes with special machines to test things like convergence, tracking, scanning and focusing. I’ve read about depth perception online (or, at least, I forced my personal assistant to), and apparently it is usually quite simple to fix. I can’t wait to get back onto the field and play properly. I’m one of the best in the world for a reason!