Eyesight correction: effects?

12U DD just got contact lenses.
20/40 vision is now 20/15 with contacts.

What can I expect with regard to improvements to her game, I wonder?

As a pitcher, she can read the signs from the catcher "really well" now,
so I suppose that is an improvement right off the bat... lol!

Pre-vision correction she is a stand-out player.
2 K's across the whole Travel season, and hitting low to mid .400's this past Spring/Summer.
And very few fielding errors.

I would always would ask her: "how can you possibly see the ball to Hit? or catch a pop-fly"?
But her performance in games was great, so I never really pressed the issue too hard.

What prompted her, is that she is assigned a back-of-the-classroom seat in 3 or 4 classes this year,
and was having trouble seeing the front display board.

I can't help but recall the story of Olympic Bobsled driver Steven Holcomb.
He suffered from a degenerative eye disease, that slowly was robbing him of his vision.
Then he had a breakthough corrective procedure done which restored his vision to 20/20.
Winter Olympics - His vision restored, Steven Holcomb eyeing bobsled history in Sochi
[excerpt from the linked article]

"In a strange twist, however, when Holcomb returned to the bobsled track his driving got worse. He had grown so accustomed to piloting by feel that he was being distracted by visual cues."

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That's right, the increased visual information actually made him a worse driver,
until he learned to let condensation form on his visor to purposefully partially-obscure his vision,
and get back to more of "driving by feel".

Anyway...
You hear a lot about successful batters having a "loose, open focus".
Maybe my kid had that because she didn't have a choice? (joke)
I hope my kid doesn't bat worse with her newfound visual acuity...

Anyone have a tale of experience to share?
As a natural 20/20 with no experience with eye-correction I'm just curious
how kids typically respond to seeing better?
Should I expect dramatic changes? Or not really?

Thanks.

Yeah, my daughter has a +7.5 contact for her dominant eye. Same situation though, she's basically blind in the one eye but compensated. With correction takes some getting used to, but in the end it takes two eyes for objects to appear in more than 2 dimensions. Really amazing what our minds can do to compensate for deficiencies!

Nothing this dramatic to share. My wife wears glasses and wears contacts. I don't. I asked my wife when she started needing glasses. She said about 12. DD1 was a top player about age 11. Didn't seem to have any problem seeing the ball. Still, I took her in, we did it together. I got readers. They give her sample lenses and immediately she's walking around exclaiming "Wow! I can see clear across the store! (Target, far wall is about 300 feet). Sometimes kids (and adults) don't realize the fuzzy vision isn't normal. She immediately started seeing the ball better in the field and at the plate.

20/40 is really not that bad. Certainly not bad enough to not be able to see pop ups or pitches. Things will just look clearer.

chinamigarden said:

20/40 is really not that bad. Certainly not bad enough to not be able to see pop ups or pitches. Things will just look clearer.

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Yeah, but what about batting? Wouldn't the improved eyesight help at the plate?

DD 1 has horrible vision.
When she moved up to 14u she had a bad hitting slump.
Slump ended when she ditched the glasses for contacts.
To be fair, most of the slump was getting used to 14u pitching, and her batting continued to improve afterwards. But, getting contacts starts her improvement

You probably won't see much change in her game. Her vision wasn't all that bad and visual acuity is only part of the overall vision "package". Also important, especially in sports, is how well the eyes and brain work together to keep a moving object in focus. As an object approaches us, for instance a pitched ball, our eyes muscles continually shift our eyeballs slightly inward to keep both eyes focused on the ball as it gets closer to us. The more smoothly and quickly the eyes shift the more clearly we will see moving objects. So it would possible for someone seeing 20/20 on a static vision test to not be able to see the spin on a fast ball. After seeing H hit for a season, I'd say that overall she sees very well. A slight improvement to her acuity will only help so much.

DD sometimes closes her eyes when she pitches so I do not think it will help her pitching.

Hitting movement pitches might be better.

Every time my DD goes 0 for 3 against weak pitching I have her eyes checked thinking there must be something wrong.....and every time they tell me her vision is fine!

dadofadirtlover said:

Yeah, but what about batting? Wouldn't the improved eyesight help at the plate?

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It might help, but 20-40 isn't bad enough to keep a kid from being a good hitter. The OP said he would ask his dd how she could possibly see the ball to hit or popups to catch. I just don't think that 20-40 is bad enough to make a good ball player bad. But the correction can only help.