Free training is available this week for blind athletes who want to try
Paralympic sports and for the coaches and trainers who work with them.

Bridge II Sports, a Triangle-based nonprofit organization that provides
sports opportunities for people with disabilities, is conducting the
Paralympics Sports Academy for the blind on Friday and Saturday at the
Governor Morehead School at 301 Ashe Ave. in Raleigh.

The academy, held in conjunction with the U.S. Paralympics, will train
people ages 8 to adult in track and field, judo, tandem cycling and
goal ball.

This track-out week is anything but a break for Austin Pittsley.

The seventh-grader at Lufkin Road Middle School in Apex has been busy
writing letters, making phone calls and putting up posters.

It's all to promote a wheelchair basketball event Friday featuring Lufkin Lightning players from his school and Junior Thunder
players from Bridge II Sports, a Durham-based nonprofit that provides adaptive and wheelchair sports opportunities in the Triangle.