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Sports Vision Center

The University Eye Center recently announced the establishment of a specialty clinic for patients who are interested in sports vision training. The state-of-the-art Sports Vision Center is designed to evaluate and provide vision enhancement to athletes seeking to improve their performance. The Center also provides screenings and consultations with athletic teams.

Many visual skills are required for optimal athletic performance. These include accurate and rapid eye movement skills, dynamic vision (seeing clearly during movement), eye-hand coordination, depth perception, vision reaction time and coordination (aiming and focusing skills). All of these abilities are learned and can be significantly improved with vision training.

“Just as athletes use exercise and nutrition to get their bodies into top physical condition they can do a similar thing with their vision,” says the Center’s director Dr. Arnold Sherman who has extensive experience working as a consultant with more than a dozen professional and amateur athletic organizations as well as individual athletes, including the 1980 “Miracle” gold medal Olympic hockey team.

Some of the ways in which vision training can help athletes include:  

     
  • A Major League Baseball player used vision training to improve his dynamic visual acuity helping him to see the spin on the ball more easily and he hit over .300 numerous times.
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  • A golfer used vision training to improve her localization and depth perception greatly benefiting her putting and shaving strokes off of her game.
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  • Professional basketball players used vision training to help localize the basket, improve shooting ability as well as vision speed and accuracy for court awareness. One of the players won an Olympic gold medal and another is currently a coach in the NBA.
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  • A young tennis player learned better focus and visualization skills through vision training and, as a result, he earned a college scholarship and gained a top-five NCAA ranking.
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  • A National Football League running back used vision training to improve his peripheral vision and avoid tacklers. After engaging in vision training he led the NFL in rushing.
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  • Numerous National Hockey League players have used vision training to improve vision speed, eye-hand coordination and the ability to find openings for shooting and passing.
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  • The Center is working with one of the foremost fencers in the United States.

Working alongside Dr. Sherman in the Center is Dr. Adam C. Deutscher, a vision therapy specialist who has served patients both at the UEC and in private practice since 1995.

To schedule an appointment with the Sports Vision Center contact Jessilin Estevez 212-938-1504

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Sports Vision Center—In the News:

Check out this video of National Hockey League forward Christopher Higgins working Dr. Sherman (courtesy of Hockeybarn.com):



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Read about the Center’s participation in the Major League Baseball East Coast Professional Showcase