International baseballers have called on expertise at Flinders University optometry school to maximise their vision on the pitch.
Neil Murray, a Senior Lecturer and Clinical Supervisor at Flinders, and fifth year Optometry Masters students, undertook sports vision screenings for the team, which had relocated to Adelaide for its summer training camp.
Mr Murray was introduced to the team by Dr Daniel Laby, of New York City who is considered to be the ‘guru’ with respect to the vision needs of elite baseball players. Dr Laby is involved with many professional baseball teams and has been a member of six World Series and two League Championship teams.
Mr Murray has worked with many Australian Olympic and Paralympic teams and was Director of Eye Services for the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games Villages Polyclinic.
Alongside Mr Murray and Dr Laby, the optometry masters students performed basic vision assessments, more complex testing of eye/hand co-ordination skills for the batters from the visiting team, and attended a day at the SA Baseball grounds at West Beach to see how the players performed on the baseball field.
“This was a fabulous chance for the students to see the practical application of some of the aspects of sports optometry they had only recently learned about during their early start to the year of 2020. The immediate application of didactic knowledge is a great way to reinforce this information into a practical and hands on pathway of assessments,” said Mr Murray.
