At first glance, Houlton sophomore Chelsi Murray is your typical high school athlete.

Murray is a key factor in coach Tim Tweedie’s midfield alignment for the Shiretowners’ girls soccer team, and she was making some aggressive plays in a game at Caribou last Friday.

Here’s what you may not know: Murray is completely color blind.

But that hasn’t slowed her one bit.

“I try to take it all [in stride] and just go play and stuff. I just play as best and hard as I can all the time,” Murray said after Houlton lost a tough 3-1 decision to the Vikes.

“It’s like nothing I can fix or anything, so people are like, ‘Oh you don’t know what you’re missing.’ It’s like I really don’t know what I’m missing exactly.”

Murray, who said being born 100 percent colorblind is rare for a girl, wears a special contact lens while playing soccer and basketball for Houlton.

“I have these orange contact lenses that help,” she said.

Murray compared the effectiveness of her lenses to the “bottom line” on ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” which highlights a winning team’s nickname or school name in bright yellow letters when the program shows scores on the crawl.

“It outlines the ball and takes off the shadow into the ball so I can see it better,” Murray said. “It does the same thing with the grass, too.”

However, there are times when it’s difficult for Murray to pick up the ball.

“If we’re playing a team that has similar [colored] uniforms, then it’s hard to tell and I might pass the ball to the wrong person. I’ve done that many times,” she explained.

Murray’s contacts have only fallen out once during a game, so that’s nothing she’s concerned about.

“I just played on,” she said. “I don’t really notice it, if it does [fall out] I just keep playing. I don’t really stop to take the time.”

Come basketball season, however, things are bit different than on the soccer field.

If the Shiretowners are playing in a gym with white lighting, Murray is fine, but if the lighting is orange, she explained that her timing is thrown off a bit.

The orange rim doesn’t really affect her too much, though.

“I also have pink rays, but they look black, so that helps with the rim, but I aim mostly for the backboard,” Murray said.

Murray’s contacts work much better on the soccer field than in the gym, she says.

“Definitely soccer with my orange contacts because I’m outside and they also protect 95 percent of UV rays, too,” she said.

When asked if her condition makes her feel any different than anyone else on the field or court, she smiled, shook her head and said, “No.”

Bonds strengthen Vikings

Many cross country teams have preseason rituals to bring everyone together before the start of a long, grinding season.

For many years, the Brewer High teams have gone on camping trips to Mount Desert Island to bond as a team and train on Acadia National Park’s carriage trails.

This year, the Caribou boys and girls not only took a camping trip of their own to the Island – the Vikes competed in the MDI Relay meet Saturday and made a weekend out of it – but many team members hiked Mount Katahdin earlier this summer.

The hike has been a rite of passage for Caribou for quite a few years during coach Roy Alden’s tenure.

“We’ve been doing that for quite a while now,” he said recently. “We haven’t gone every year but almost every year.”

The ascent to the state’s highest peak has different benefits for different athletes on the team.

“It’s just a chance to go and have fun, it’s really kind of a neat experience,” said Alden.

“For some kids who are not real athletic, just getting up the mountain is a challenge, and all of a sudden it’s [like] wow, I can do that, who knows what else I can do,” he continued.

Goalie camp in Madawaska

Madawaska High School will host a “GoalieFest” camp for local goaltenders this weekend.

The camp, which will take place Saturday and Sunday on the 11th Avenue fields, will be directed by James Hachey, an all-state goaltender for the Owls in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Hachey played college ball at North Adams State College, and currently plays for Foxboro United F.C., a Division I squad in the New England “Over the Hill” league.

Students in grades 1-12 are welcome to attend, with Sunday’s activities being for the older athletes. Any proceeds will be donated to the Four Seasons Trail Association in Madawaska, a nonprofit outdoor recreational organization.

For more information, visit www.savethedaygktraining.com/11.html.

Running of the Vikings

Caribou’s recent alumni cross country meet was well-attended, with 80 participants.

P.J. Gorneault won the 2.8-mile race in 14 minutes, 2 seconds, while his fiancee, Rene Laliberty, took women’s honors in 18:54.

Evan Graves of Presque Isle was second overall in the Aug. 15 race in 14:21 while Caribou girls coach Thomas Beckum was third in 15:33. Sam Sheehan, a 2007 grad now at Brown University, was fourth in 15:33, Spencer McElwain fifth in 15:48 and current team member Christian Sleeper sixth in 15:57.

Not everyone who competed took it seriously.

“I ran with two other [teammates], and we just had a good time,” said Vikings frontrunner Hannah Saunders.

rmclaughlin@bangordailynews.net

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