Vision Loss is No Obstacle for Plainfield Runner
PLAINFIELD – To Andrew Gray, running is as glorious as sunsets over the water, beauty of nature or wisdom of scripture.
He can’t see or read as he once did. Less than a year ago, the Plainfield 14-year-old became legally blind. But he can run. He can see a few meters ahead, and he has retained some peripheral vision.
Running supplies passion and purpose. Paradoxically, it is the teenager reassuring family and friends everything will be all right, not the other way around.
“I don’t know how I process it emotionally,” Andrew said. “Running? I like running still. It’s never going to bring me down.”
He has embraced the style of “Without Limits,” which, coincidentally, is the name of a movie about running icon Steve Prefontaine. After a recent race, Plainfield High School coach Christin Arvin told Andrew he ran as Pre once did. All guts.
“He is a push-the-pace kind of runner. To race with no fear,” the coach said.
Andrew’s Christian faith has influenced his outlook. He reflects on the Bible verses of John 9:2-3:
His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
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One year ago, Andrew was one of the fastest 13-year-olds in Indiana. He finished eighth in the middle-school state cross-country meet, and he qualified for the national Junior Olympics.
Soon thereafter, his parents noticed changes in their son. He was peering inches from his laptop or zooming in. He took screenshots of texts to his cellphone so he could enlarge them. While playing games, he leaned in to see the board. And he could not read the whiteboard at school.
Andrew’s parents reasoned he needed glasses. At the optometrist, he was asked to read the letters on the screen.
“What letters?” he asked.
Doctors were puzzled. Andrew’s eyes appeared to be healthy.
He had one magnetic resonance imaging, then another. He was examined by a neuro ophthalmologist and spent five days at Riley Children’s Hospital. While there, all he wanted to do was leave the room and go for a run.
Ultimately, Andrew was diagnosed with Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy. LHON is a rare, inherited disease that causes vision loss, typically in young adult males.
LHON is caused by mutations in mitochondrial DNA, which are inherited from the mother. Mutations damage the optic nerve, which carries visual information from eye to brain. Andrew’s mother, Jennifer, and brother, Isaiah, 16, tested positive for LHON but have not lost vision.
Andrew has 20/1600 vision, meaning he can see at 20 feet what a person with normal vision can see at 1,600 feet.
His father, Adam Gray, a software engineer, said he has learned about the science through artificial intelligence, ChatGPT and Gronk – anything to help to his son. So far, running has been the best therapy.
“If he couldn’t run,” the father said, “I think we’d be dealing with a very different mental health issue.”
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As part of Andrew’s individualized education plan (IEP), his school day is split between Plainfield High School and Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
Andrew poses with his medal collection.
He is picked up by a white bus as early as 6:20 a.m. and arrives at the Indianapolis school by 7:30. There, he takes classes in cooking and life skills, braille, assistive technology and theater (an elective).
After third period, the bus picks him up at 10:40 and transports him to the high school by 11:20, in time for lunch with cross-country teammates. Thereafter, he takes honors classes in chemistry, English and algebra. School leaders have been accommodating, knowing Andrew has always been a gifted student.
“We’ve been blessed with amazing coaches and teachers,” his mother said.
There was a template to maintain Andrew’s sports eligibility.
Hamilton Southeastern sprinter Noah Malone also was diagnosed with LHON at age 13, and he split classes between HSE and the blind school. Jennifer Gray has reached out via Instagram to Malone, now 24.
Malone won a 200-meter state title in 2019 and a 100-meter gold medal at the 2024 Paris Paralympics. It would be no exaggeration to suggest Andrew will end up on a global podium someday.
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Malone runs the 100 meters in a straight line, and peripheral vision allows him to stay in his lane for 200- or 400-meter races.
Cross country is altogether different. There are runners all around, obstacles, turns, uphills, downhills, terrain changes.
“When it comes to the races, it’s a lot harder to know exactly where I’m going because I can’t see that much farther ahead of me,” Andrew said.
Plainfield’s first cross country meet was at Swinford Park, the same course he ran in middle school. He walked the familiar pathway the night before, feeling for dips and turns, but fell once on a practice run-out.
On race day, he collided with another runner while crossing over to a water station. Andrew came away with a concussion.
This wasn’t going to work.
“It’s learning to run and walk again,” Arvin said. “In some ways figuratively, in some ways literally.”
In cross country, the Indiana High School Athletic Association allows guide runners for the visually impaired. Guides are tethered to the runner, wearing a neon yellow vest. So Plainfield reached out and found a guide: Cole Rightley.
Rightley, 28, is a former Avon football receiver and basketball player. He once lived in Plainfield and now is employed in Bloomington by the Monroe County YMCA as youth and family program director.
Most pertinent: he has run a 4:29 road mile and a 1-hour, 15-minute half-marathon. To keep up with someone like Andrew, a genuine runner is required.
In their first race together, Rightley said, it was awkward. It was difficult to determine when Andrew wanted to make a move. Rightley would call out when turns or gradient changes were coming up, and together they found a rhythm.
“Even when he didn’t run exactly the times he wanted, I never saw him pout or anything like that,” Rightley said. “He was always proud of the effort he put in. He struck me as very mature, especially for a freshman.”
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Andrew can see about five or 10 meters ahead and recognize shapes. He said making jokes about his condition makes him feel better. His mother said her son has always been happy-go-lucky.
“I don’t even know how he’s doing day to day,” the mother said. “I’m not usually an emotional person. I’ve been pretty emotional the last 10 months.”
Andrew’s response: “It’s OK, Mom.”
For Andrew, the most vexing component of LHON is interference with mitochondria, often called powerhouses of the cell. LHON is an “energy production disease,” as his father described it.
Andrew has not run as fast as a year ago.
Plainfield had a run-off of 3,200 meters on the track to determine the last spot on the roster of seven for a cross country regional. Andrew was beaten, but his time of 10:49 was his best.
“There isn’t too much I’m sad about,” Andrew said. “Sometimes I’m sad about some of the stuff in it, but it’s like, ‘Who cares? Let’s just be faster.’ “
In Saturday’s state Junior Olympics at Shelbyville, he ran 4,000 meters for 34th in 14:17, or 41 seconds slower than last year.
That was cross country, though, and he was running with a different guide. Andrew conceded he likes track better now. He can navigate a 400-meter oval well enough to set his own course.
He has four seasons of high school track, and it is not too early to dream bigger. In the most recent under-17 World Para Athletics Championships, held in 2019, he has already run fast enough to have won a 1,500-meter silver medal.
Andrew Gray
He is supported by youth groups at both Plainfield Christian Church and Whitestown’s Traders Point Christian Church. He wears a bracelet with the inscription “all in.” His brother wears one, written in braille characters, that says “believe.”
Andrew would not say he is stoic or heroic.
“I kind of see it more as like something that God put in my way to help me get closer to Him and lean more on Him,” he said. “Because God puts out struggles for us to have to overcome, to realize his glory even more and just look toward him and keep our eyes on Him.”
When it comes to impairment, Andrew declines to see it.
Contact David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
Andrew Gray (right) running with his guide, Cole Rightley.