Local optometrists fitting athletes with vision-enhancing contacts

Archives Admin · #1 (**permalink**) 09-19-2005, 03:40 PM

In an era when a huge emphasis is placed on sports performance at all levels, athletes are constantly looking for an edge.

Locally, a number of them already have found one.

Take Matt Stricker and Devon Hedin, for example. Stricker, the assistant pro at Par 3 Golf Course and a professional long-drive competitor, and Hedin, a pitcher and first baseman for the Hitters' Club Select club baseball team in Billings, have benefited in their respective endeavors with the help of Drs. Ruben and Kerry Sanchez, local optometrists who fit the athletes with MaxSight contact lenses.

Nike and Bausch & Lomb have combined the technologies to design and manufacture a soft, fully tinted contact lens for optimum sports-vision enhancement. The MaxSight lenses cover a person's entire pupil, eliminating glare and intensifying contrast, and are designed to help athletes' eyes focus on what they need to see and block out what they don't.

Stricker and Hedin took the chance to see more clearly and the results have been great so far.

"I really like these lenses for the game of golf," said Stricker. "You see so much more with them in. As far as reading the greens, that's where I've benefited. The colors themselves really stand out. The grass looks very vivid. You can see the hills and subtle breaks a lot better."

"It's so much easier to see what pitches are coming towards you because you can see the laces of the ball that much better," added Hedin, who played for the Billings Blue Jays Class A America Legion team during the summer. "There's a big difference."

Two different tints

Working much like sunglasses without decreased peripheral vision due to the frame or the inevitable leaking of peripheral light, the lenses are manufactured in two separate tints: grey/green and amber.

The grey/green tint is designed for use in those sports that are played in bright sunlight where glare and visual comfort are taken into consideration. Grey/green enhances the green portion of the visual spectrum to improve an athlete's recognition of contour and detail. They are recommended for golfers and runners.

The amber tint is designed to help athletes who track a ball at a fast-moving pace. This tint selectively filters specific wavelengths in the blue and green portion of the sight spectrum, making the ball even more discernable from the background. They are recommended for those who play football, baseball, tennis or soccer.

When you wear these lenses, certain colors become explicitly sharp, and it is obvious how well they can work in the midst of athletic competition.

If seeing is believing, then many athletes in town have been converted.

"These specialized tints are unique in the sense that they help steady the dilation of the pupil, allowing the eyes to relax more, which in turn allows the body to relax more," said Kerry Sanchez. "I think almost every sports authority will tell you that the key to peak performance in athletic competition is relaxation.

"The technology and the ideas behind these contact lenses make a lot of sense to me from an optometric and visual standpoint. Most of our feedback from the athletes we have fit has been great. We did have one golfer who still prefers his regular clear contacts, but everyone's perception is different. It's true that some will not adapt to these tints and it's also very true that not everyone is a good candidate to be a contact lens-wearer."

Industry pioneers

Sanchez and his father operate Billings Eyecare Associates. Their practice is one of just 150 in the United States that gained early distribution access to the MaxSight lenses.

That was made possible due to Kerry Sanchez's work at Pacific University's College of Optometry in Oregon with Dr. Alan Reichow as part of the first clinical trials of the lenses conducted in 2002. The lenses were fit on six members of Pacific University's baseball team with positive results.

Now that the lenses are being appropriated on a larger level, Sanchez and his father have all the resources to perform this type of vision enhancement on various athletes in various sports.

Aside from Stricker and Hedin, Billings Eyecare Associates have provided the lenses to Matt and Shawn Lebsock, both University of Montana football players; Adam Sanchez, the quarterback at Rocky Mountain College; Nick Lebsock, a football player at Billings Skyview; Tyson Bickford, a golfer at Billings West; Jase Harrington, a golfer at Billings Central; and Tony LaGaly, a youth football and baseball player.

"We are very excited to see what kind of feedback we get from our other athletes," Kerry Sanchez said. "It will be interesting to see what the college football players think, considering most of their games are played during the middle of the day when it's bright out, and depending on which way the sun is oriented, glare can be a major factor in catching or throwing a football."

Big-league results

More famously, Baltimore Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts is one athlete who has experienced great success while wearing the amber-tinted lenses. Roberts is nearing the end of the best season in his four-year career. He will most likely finish 2005 having batted over .300 for the first time.

"Being that MaxSight lenses make the red seams of a baseball appear brighter and enhance contrast, a hitter will be able to focus and see the spin and rotation of the ball much clearer," Ruben Sanchez said. "Good hitters have cat-quick reflexes, but it is their vision and ability to see the ball that is the trigger which unleashes their swing in response to a fastball."

Within three or four months, optometrists nationwide should be able to provide these contact lenses to athletes everywhere. When that happens, Kerry Sanchez believes athletic vision enhancement has the chance to become commonplace in sports.

"It has been proven that elite athletes tend to have superior vision over amateur athletes" he said. "By maximizing an athlete's vision, it's possible that they may have a better chance at getting to the next level. If all the results in the future are as good as the initial feedback, there's no reason these lenses won't become very popular at all levels."

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)

Local optometrists fitting athletes with vision-enhancing contacts

Contact Lenses