Freshman middle blocker overcomes adversity

To anyone who doesn't know her well, freshman Melissa Brewer looks like any other student and just another player on the volleyball court.\nBut if they saw her at night, after her contacts have been taken out, they'd find a different story.\nBrewer's glasses are not normal glasses. In fact, if there weren't frames, it would be easy to mistake the lenses for the bottoms of glass bottles.\nThat's because Brewer has been legally blind since she was five.\nHer mother first realized she had a vision problem when she found Brewer watching television sideways. Because Brewer couldn't focus on the television from the front, she had to turn to the side to watch it out of the corner of her eye.\nA quick trip to the eye doctor confirmed that her eyesight was in worse condition than that of other 5-year-olds. Being legally blind doesn't mean she can't see at all; just that when she isn't wearing her glasses or contacts, she can't make out defintions or features. It also means that people become blurred objects.\n"Most people wear minus-2 prescription contacts," Brewer said. "I wear a minus-9 and a half prescription."\nDespite her blindness, she has managed to lead a normal life. Brewer, who attended Bloomington High School North, played basketball and softball before quitting to concentrate on volleyball.\nOn her high school team, she set an all-time record for career kills and was named to Class 4A All-State first team and won all-conference awards.\nAlthough Brewer can see fine with her contacts in, she has to be careful to take care of them, or she could have problems with her eyes. She has to replace the lenses every week or the world becomes blurry, leading to problems from seeing the board in class to hitting a ball in a game.\nShe also has to make sure to take them out every night or else the blood vessels in her eyes will grow rapidly, which, when she was younger, almost landed her in surgery.\n"If I don't get my prescription right, then I can't see hardly anything at all," Brewer said. "I have to get checked up really often to make sure I can see the ball when passing. It can be difficult."\nThose frequent check ups keep Brewer's eyesight in such good shape that coach Katie Weismiller said the blindness is not a factor in her play.\nBrewer made her debut last weekend for the IU volleyball team in front of a hometown crowd. She started and played in all three matches and showed unusual leadership for a freshman.\n "Melissa coming in was unbelievable," senior outside hitter Amanda Welter said. "We knew she had to step up and play, and she took the role on and stayed with us."\n In more of the tense moments in the matches against Bowling Green and Loyola-Chicago, it was Brewer calling for the ball. At the end of the tournament, despite her nervousness, she collected 19 kills and 36 digs for all three matches.\n She has made an impact on her teammates on and off the court. Welter, paired as Brewer's buddy during the first week of preseason, said Brewer has a great sense of humor and makes the whole team laugh. During preseason camp, Brewer had the whole team in stitches when she performed a skit for them.\nBrewer will play a key role this weekend for the Hoosiers as they travel to Pittsburgh to face Miami (Ohio), Arkansas and Pittsburgh. As part of who she is as a player, she will be prepared to play when IU takes the court.\n"She's a type of player who likes to be on the court," Weismiller said. "Melissa loves to play, and she works hard"