Watch blind high school basketball player nail jump shot as Michigan crowd goes wild
The crowd of 2,500 sat silent and motionless, their eyes glued to the 17-year-old lining up her feet on the hardwood of a high school gym. As static hummed through the air, the rhythmic tapping of metal on metal on the backboard directed 11th grader Jules Hoogland to her goal — the basketball goal straight ahead.
Hoogland is blind and acknowledged the goal’s location — thanks to the tapping.
After a teammate helps Hoogland adjust from behind, she turns her attention back to the tapping, before banking in a shot that was followed by the loud eruption of the crowd, now mostly on their feet.
“I’m just going to go into the game and if I make it, I make it,” Hoogland told ABC 13. This was her second attempt at the shot.
“I was like, whoa, I did not expect that,” says Hoogland. “And then the applause!”
The teen plays on Zeeland’s Unified Sports basketball team, which is composed of a combination of students with and without disabilities, MLive reported. March 22 was their final game of the season, which played out against a backdrop of a packed house in Zeeland, Michigan.
“It was so moving to see her hit that shot again in front of 2,500 people,” special education teacher and coach Nate Vande Gutche said in a statement, according to multiple outlets. “We couldn’t have been more excited for her and her family. It capped off what was a very memorable day for all of us!”
Praise goes to Hoogland and those cheering teammates surrounding her, including the teammate who aided Hoogland from behind — close friend Ally Guffey, Fox 17 said.
“She’s my eyes on the court, because I don’t have my cane side to put my trust in here to make sure she doesn’t let me get hit by balls, and she guides me in the right direction,” Hoogland said to Fox 17.
They’ve known each other since middle school and grew closer thanks to the sports program.
“I had never met anyone who was blind before. So I knew nothing,” Guffy told Fox 17. “She put a lot of trust in me. And it just... we had a lot of trial and error. But we have come very, very far. And now we’re in a class together for the past two years.”
According to MLive, Hoogland is a “triplet survivor” — she lost her brother at four weeks and while she and her sister survived, Jules lost her eyesight.
“God gives me the strength to keep going,” she said to MLive. “If I didn’t have that (my faith), I wouldn’t have been able to get through that.”
Since the video went viral on social media, it’s been retweeted by major media outlets including SportsCenter.
This story was originally published March 25, 2022 at 12:31 PM with the headline "Watch blind high school basketball player nail jump shot as Michigan crowd goes wild."