Keep your Eye on the Ball
By Junilla Gabel
It is soccer time! Everywhere you look, soccer balls are kicked, thrown and enjoyed by young and old. But, have you ever wondered, why a soccer ball is a specific colour? Why it has stripes, blocks or circles on? VISION investigates, and points out what makes them visually special.
Firstly, there are so many different soccer balls on the market; the professional match ball, the match ball, the practice ball, the indoor ball, the futsal ball and lastly the promotional ball. Yes, I know that most of these balls are dynamically designed to fly exceptionally true, and that they have passed the highest ratings, but why the particular colour or design?
Let’s start with the most important ball for 2010 – the official World Cup match ball, called the JABULANI. JABULANI means “celebrations” or “come to bring happiness to everyone”.
There are eleven colours used on the JABULANI, surprisingly it is also the eleventh Adidas World Cup ball. These 11 colours represent also the 11 players in every team and the 11 official languages of South Africa. The colourful four triangle-shapes with the white background lend the ball a unique appearance in African spirit. This design and colours fixates the player’s eyes on the ball while rotating and moving over the field. The white background makes it easy for you, as supporter, to notice against the green field. The design creates a visual signal that keeps your eyes focused on the ball, while Bafana Bafana scores another goal (hopes). Isn’t that just Ayoba!!
This is an exceptional ball in quality and design, and Adidas even claims that it has surpassed its own Teamgeist ball from 2006 World Cup, in constructing the roundest and most accurate ball ever played.
To make it more exciting – the final match is played by a special design – the white and gold Jo’bulani.
Then there is the Nike Total 90 Hi-Vis soccer ball, developed with leading sports-vision scientists, and designed to aid soccer players in low light conditions especially in the winter months. According to our investigation, this is the very first soccer ball, where a vision-scientist helped with the development of a soccer ball. They studied arrangement, contrast and effects of different colours. Different designs, artificial light and field backgrounds, were also looked at.
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Sports Vision Explained
By Werner Noëth and Chené Pelser
The topic of Sports Vision is one which is fairly unknown amongst not only the general public but even in optometric and ophthalmological circles. The first impression one might get when the term “sports vision” is used is one of sitting comfortably with a the television screen clearly in sight and a large array of snacks and other refreshments within ones grasp. The experience of then viewing your favourite sports star or team perform well would be a pleasant one which would make the “sports vision” or maybe “sports viewing” session worth enjoying regularly.
The truth is that Sports Vision has to do with vision, more specifically visual skills involved in performing visual tasks while participating in sport. Thus it is important for sportsman and sportswoman and not that important to spectators. As we all know, the variety of skills required in different sports are endless but there are some basic skills that most sports would require…
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Internal Vision News
• John Schubach was one of 1850 triathletes that had the courage to partake in the Ironman SA competition; he came 124th and completed the event in 10hours and 34 minutes. What an accomplishment, well done John
• Chené Pelser one of Vision’s Optometrists moved to our Pretoria branch in Zambezi on the 1st of May and will be manning our store full time
• 2 of our staff members, Eoudia and Rozettha, celebrated their sons 21st birthdays in April. Happy birthday once again.
• Tamia, one of our frontline staff is leaving us end of May, after almost 2 years of employment. Thank you Tamia for your hard work, you will be missed.
• Vision is 2 members richer – Rachelle de Beer, who started in January and Marizaan van Niekerk, who started in March. We are really proud to have you on our Team.
• Vision will have exiting promotions during the Soccer World Cup, so be sure to visit us during this period.
• In May, John Schubach joined Leigh Bennie and Prof Harry Seftel on “A Word on Medical” 702 Talk Radio and discussed Optometry. Visit the 702 website to download the podcast. |
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