Sports Vision Director earns national award
5/11/2011 12:00:00 AM | General
May 11, 2011
Al Wile, Asst. Director of the Human Performance Lab (HPL) and Sports Vision Director, in the Air Force Athletics Department has been named the 2011 recipient of the prestigious Eagle Award. The Eagle Award is given by the American Optometric Association Sports Vision Section (SVS) council each year to recognize a professional athlete, coach or trainer who promotes sports vision and vision training to the public and contributions to the field of sports vision. Wile will be honored at the SVS Annual Business Meeting June 17-18 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The Sports Vision Division works to enhance an athlete's eye performance to improve athletic performance. The HPL has developed state-of-the-art vision enhancement capabilities. Each testing and training regime is sport specific, the time involved in each assessment and training varies depending on the sport. The HPL staff recently published a study with data on more than 900 cadet athletes over a 10-year period and tracked an athlete's improvement over their four-year career. The study concentrated on myriad sports vision exercises and found a minimum improvement of 54% in one exercise and two exercises with more than 150% improvement.
Besides training USAFA athletes, the HPL staff is working with several other military organizations on improving visual skills including AFSOC Combat Controllers and Air Force Security Forces.
Wile received his master's in Sports Medicine from Chapman University. Prior to becoming the HPL Sports Vision Director, Wile helped lead the Academy boxing team to 11 National Collegiate Boxing Championships. The sports vision program began 1994 and has developed into the most sophisticated program in the country through a team effort of Wile, Dr. Scott McKim, an Air Force Optometrist, and Lt Col Michael Zupan, HPL Director. The HPL trains over 500 athletes in 12 sports (over 5,000 training sessions per year) with both on and off season programs.
Wile has worked with numerous professional athletes and organizations including the St. Louis Cardinals minor baseball program, Olympic athletes and world class athletes at all levels from elementary school though university level. He has conducted camps with SPARQ (Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction and Quickness) to include the national Area-Code Baseball Camp and the Elite-Eleven premier high school football quarterbacks camp in 2004. He is a frequent sports vision consultant, advisor, guest speaker, and presenter throughout the country.
