The players on the Manual sideline screamed “Go Ellie!” to cheer on their teammate during last Tuesday’s field hockey game against Sacred Heart. Without missing a beat, Manual's student manager Addison Evers, standing on the far left side of the Crimsons' bench, repeated “Go Ellie!”

Then, she pulled the scorebook close to her face, about 7 inches away, to jot down a statistic and looked back up to the field, searching for the ball.

But Evers couldn’t see much of the field. In fact, the senior had no idea why the team was screaming teammate Ellie Wheatley’s name. Born with albinism, an inherited genetic condition that reduces the amount of melanin pigment formed in one’s skin, hair and/or eyes, Evers has had a visual impairment her whole life. Her vision has deteriorated through high school to a point in which she is now legally blind.

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