The Current10:37Meet Amy Burk, Canada’s goalball star
Amy Burk remembers the tension of her team competing in the goalball final at the Parapan American Games in Chile last year — knowing that a win could secure a spot at the Paralympics in Paris.
“I was on the bench for the last little bit of that game. And every time I looked at the clock, I think only two seconds had run down — it felt like an eternity,” said Burk, originally from Charlottetown, P.E.I., and now living in Ottawa.
Burk is a long-time player on Canada’s national goalball team, a sport which involves athletes with visual impairments trying to throw a ball into the opposing team’s net — while that opposing team tries to block it with just their bodies. The teams wear blindfolds, listening for bells embedded in the ball as it jingles across the volleyball court-sized space.
Emma-Leigh Reinke scored a hat-trick, including two successful penalty conversions, and Canada hung on for a 4-3 victory in the Santiago 2023 Parapan American Games women’s goalball gold medal final. The win also gives Canada a berth at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
In Chile, Burk and her team secured a 4-3 victory over the U.S., winning Canada’s first ever gold in goalball at the Parapan Am Games, after three consecutive bronze medals.
“It was an incredible moment,” Burk told The Current’s guest host Connie Walker
Burk was born with albinism, a genetic condition that affects a person’s hair, skin and eye colour, and can often lead to vision problems. She will captain Canada’s goalball team at her fifth Paralympics next week in Paris, but told Walker that she once thought the sport was too “unbelievably insane” to pursue. Here is part of their conversation.
How did you get into the sport in the first place?
With visual impairment, you get an itinerant teacher who kind of follows you through your schooling to make sure you have the right accommodations if you need them. And my itinerant teacher was on the board of ParaSport and Recreation PEI.
[He thought] I would be a good fit, and they kind of approached me and walked me through the whole thing. I went to a couple of practices and thought it was unbelievably insane to throw a ball at you when you couldn’t see. And I was only 12 at the time, so I was a little intimidated. I said, “No, this wasn’t for me.”
And then the next year, I don’t know what happened, but it just kind of clicked that, you know, I didn’t really give it a fair shot. I love sport, and I knew the older I was getting, it was going to be harder to continue playing sport at a high level with fully sighted peers. So, I thought, “You know what? I really should go give it a second chance.”
And I fell in love with it, and it has shaped my life drastically since then.
Your team was awarded the most trending moment at the Canadian Sport Awards last year after that victory in Chile. What does that mean to you, for the sport to find a bigger audience like that?
The amount of media attention our team has been getting over the last year has been nothing but phenomenal. A lot of times when people hear that we’re going to the Paralympics and they always ask what sport? And as soon as you say goalball, it’s like deer in the headlights — nobody knows.
[Now] they’ve seen it on TV during the games in Santiago, they’ve seen the articles, they’ve seen the most trending moments. And people are now more aware.
Being one of the only team sports for blind and visually impaired athletes, it’s great to get this promotion because then we can get those younger kids and continue to build our program. Because that’s definitely one of the things we struggle with across the country, just recruitment.
Despite being born with albinism that resulted in a visual impairment, Charlottetown’s Amy Burk has excelled as an athlete throughout her life. She discovered goalball at age 12, a sport that will take her to Paris this year for her fifth Paralympic Games. CBC News caught up with Burk to talk about her love for the sport.
What would you tell a young athlete, visually impaired or not, who is hearing this and might be looking up to you as an athletic hero?
Don’t do what I did as a young kid. Like, I saw this sport, and I said no way. So, you’ve got to give things a chance. And you have to just try something that’s different.
And I’m so fortunate enough that at a young age, I went back and tried … Definitely don’t give up on something because it seems different or it seems hard.
One of the things for me too is, I was already ashamed and embarrassed of having a visual impairment because I was the only one in all my schools, and I didn’t want to be labelled as the different kid already for having albinism. But also now that kid that plays something really weird.
I’m so thankful that I kind of [got past that], but I really wish it never came to that, that I would have just accepted it and been like, “You know what? This is something that does look kind of cool and I don’t care what other people think.”