Pennsylvania mother continues to go to bat for her visually impaired children with screenplay, "Curveball"
Fighting for inclusion and ways to overcome adversity – that's the theme of a new movie in the works from a mother in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
This is a family with two sons who have very limited vision, but that hasn't stopped them from belonging to sports teams. Accomplishments that came after their mom went to bat for them.
Kristin Smedley is back in her field of dreams in Richboro, the setting for a screenplay she wrote about convincing a Little League to allow her partially blind 10-year-old son to play on a team.
"It's the story of the power of inclusion, of fighting for inclusion," she said.
Her son, Michael, who's 25 now, said the team eventually rallied around him.
"We were able to talk with them and make some accommodations like hitting off a tee and playing the outfield with another guy on the team," he said.
The team went on to win a championship. Now, the screenplay called
"Blindness is not a curveball," Kristin Smedley said.
"Things that we maybe perceive as barriers and challenges can actually end up being strengths when you look at it and reframe it from a different perspective," Michael Smedley said.
"Blindness is not a curveball."
CBS News Philadelphia first introduced you to the Smedley family in 2017. Michael has a younger brother, Mitchell, who's also visually impaired.
"Having two blind kids initially, that was the most devastating news," Kristin Smedley told us in 2017.
But the Smedley boys, who played air hockey by listening for sounds, quickly learned how to turn adversity into opportunity.
"It's more difficult, but it's just daily living. People live with all kinds of challenges," Mitchell Smedley, 21, said. "Blindness is a version of that."
Mitchell Smedley also played baseball. His mother was determined that her sons would get every opportunity possible.
"Youth sports done right build incredible human beings, and that's what happened on this field," she said.
The boys' mother hopes production on the movie can start soon; she's still working on fundraising. Michael and Mitchell Smedley have both gone on to graduate from college and are working on their careers.
