Our Story
How We Started
San Diego Goalball is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2025 to expand athletic and community opportunities for people who are blind or visually impaired, primarily in San Diego County. Mike, Lori, and Neal Meyers created the organization after Mike discovered goalball while studying at the Colorado Center for the Blind, returned home, and found no local program.
Drawing on Mike's newfound love of the game, Lori's 20 years of experience as a Disabled Resource counselor at a local community college, and Neal's background as an attorney, we launched San Diego Goalball, which has quickly grown into a strong community.
Matt Boyle, a former U.S. Paralympic coach whose athletes earned a silver medal at the Rio Games, coaches the team. His leadership has helped establish high-quality instruction, structured practices, and meaningful competitive opportunities.
Today, San Diego Goalball provides a welcoming space where blind and visually impaired athletes of diverse backgrounds build skills, confidence, and lasting friendships through competitive sport. Individual donations have helped sustain us.
Who we are
Players have formed friendships and support networks with people they had not met before joining the program. They stay connected through an active community chat group where they discuss goalball, independent living, and daily life with vision loss.
For many, tournaments are their first opportunity to travel independently and confidently outside of their homes. We also host occasional social gatherings, including an annual end-of-year celebration.
In addition to athletic programming, we provide educational outreach to local schools and other nonprofits serving the visually impaired and blind community.
Special education programs have invited our players to demonstrate goalball for both visually impaired and sighted elementary and middle school students, helping raise awareness and promote inclusion.
recent accomplishments
Our greatest accomplishment is the continued rapid growth of a community of incredible visually impaired and blind athletes from diverse socioeconomic, ethnic, educational, age, disability, and gender backgrounds.
Competitively, our teams achieved remarkable success at the Locomotion Goalball Tournament in Los Angeles in September 2026, where one of our men's teams won first place overall, and our women's team earned second place. This was an extraordinary milestone for a program less than two years old.
PHOTO gallery
