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By: Taylor Kauffman
BOLIVAR, MO. — Gym class isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
“Do you like P.E. class?” asked KY3 reporter Taylor Kauffman.
“Do you want my honest thoughts?” asked Bolivar student Rachel Cohen.
“Shoot it to me straight,” Kauffman said.
“I actually do not like P.E.,” said Cohen.
But soon to be Bolivar freshmen Rachel Cohen, does it for other reasons.
“I like to try everything,” Cohen said. “I’m a perfectionist so I have high expectations of myself, so I do whatever I say I’m going to do.”
For Rachel, activities like P.E. class are more difficult, because she’s blind, but she’s never lets that stop her.
“She’s just remarkable. She doesn’t back down from anything. Yesterday we did flag football and we ran routes, and I was thinking, ‘how’s this gonna go’ and she’s like, ‘Coach I want to do this,'” said P.E. coach Betsy Berry.
“I knew after the first day she was going to teach me so much about life and just going hard at everything you do, like the box jump, basketball, volleyball, she wants to try everything,” said college student Alair Love.
Alair is Rachel’s personal aide, acting as her eyes in class, not knowing she needed Rachel to see life more clearly.
“I didn’t know I was going to get this job until about a week before it started. So it kind of just popped out of nowhere and I’m so glad it did because I got to meet Coach Davis coach Berry, and especially Rachel. She changed my whole summer and basically changed my life,” Love said.
Rachel’s positivity has affected everyone.
“I definitely say it’s rubbed off on me like if I’ve just got done talking with her, I’ll be super nice and happy when I go to talk to my friends,” said classmate Alie Combs.
Her energy is contagious but so is her ambition.
“For me, if I don’t think I’m going to be good at something, I don’t really want to try it,” Love said. “But now it’s like, I can try anything and even if I’m not good at it, I can still have a good attitude.”
“I don’t know how you could be around her and not be inspired continually seeing her just try anything we do, she wants to try it,” Berry said.
“You know, you can always be like other people,” Cohen said. “There’s not a — Like, say I’m blind, people say because you’re a blind person that you can’t do this, you can’t do that. You can just be like any other people on this world. You just be what you are.”
And maybe we should all be a little more like Rachel Cohen.
