Paralympic Profile: Asya Miller

“I tell people the game is played inside in an area the size of a volleyball court and that there are three blindfolded goalies on each side,” says Miller, a Michigan native who now lives and trains in Colorado Springs.

If that image isn’t enough, Miller sends them to YouTube and its nearly 300 videos of the premier team sport for the blind and visually impaired (Miller is legally blind due to Stargardt’s Disease) and centerpiece of the Paralympic Summer Games.

Goalball Action

Goalball is a game of passes and positioning, of hard and off-speed scoring throws that send defenders diving to block the hard, bell-filled ball, with nothing but sound to plot its path.

It’s a simple game: one team throws (rolls) the ball, the other tries to stop it and take their shot. According to Miller, the game’s core challenge is developing effective throws. “Throwing the ball fast enough or with enough spin that it makes its own noise,” Miller says. “Everyone has their own unique throw—not everyone throws the spin; usually, you don’t hear it till it’s right there.”

Some try to fool the defense with a slow, quiet roll, which, Miller says, is rarely effective.

As the ball must hit once in the landing area en route to the goal, bouncing is another strategy gaining in popularity in international play. “China does that every other throw,” Miller says.

In a tournament in Sweden earlier this year, however, it was Miller who scored the winning goal against China in a sudden-death shootout.

On defense, Miller is prudent. “I don’t hit the deck on every roll; I think that’s dangerous,” she says.

Growth of Goalball

Goalball isn’t a huge sport: six women’s teams will vie for the US title later this month, including Miller’s Kalamazoo Chaos, winners of five of the last seven national championships.

But like the disabled sports movement, goalball is growing. In 2004, it became the first Paralympic sport to offer some US team members residency at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

It’s also taken Miller around the world. “I do like competing in the big venues,” Miller says, including the Olympic stadiums in Sydney and Athens, where she competed in the 2000 and 2004 Paralympics.

The Complete Athlete

Miller grew up playing flag football, soccer, volleyball, and softball. She’s also a green belt in Shotokan karate.

Before discovering goalball, Miller’s signature sport was track and field—at both Lapeer East High School and Western Michigan University, experiences that shaped her athletic destiny.

“Being on a Division 1 track team really showed me how to work out,” says Miller, who holds US Association of Blind Athletes (USABA) national records in the discus and shot put.

College strength training regimens sparked Miller’s development as a weightlifter. She can dead-lift 150Kg (330 pounds). Though she’s competed for the USABA powerlifting team and has set nine visually impaired world records, Miller can best the “able-bodied,” as she did last December in a Denver tournament against top area lifters including Air Force cadets.

Over the past decade, Miller has won 79 medals in goalball, track, powerlifting, and karate competitions. In 2001, the United States Olympic Committee named her Female Athlete of the Year.

Miller is a force off the field as well, spending past summers hammering in house frames, volunteering at sports education camps for blind children, even cruising with Michigan cops in the state’s Law Enforcement Youth Training Academy. In May, she earned her Masters in Criminal Justice from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. True to form, she was named Outstanding Student of the Year.

Miller competes in the US nationals June 19 and heads to Beijing in September for the Paralympic s.

US Paralympic Goalball team member Asya Miller

Goalball gladiator Asya Miller

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