Aaron Golub has been through the motions thousands of times. He takes a deep breath to relax, claps his hands and runs to the line of scrimmage from the Tulane huddle. He crouches into his stance, prepared to long snap the ball.

An undaunted Golub breathes one more time before rocketing back the ball.  He’s a creature of habit, relying on the same movements to complete the long snapping process he can’t fully visually comprehend.

Golub is legally blind.

“(Long snapping’s) obviously pretty darn difficult to do upside down, going backwards and someone’s about to run right into you,” Chris Rubio, Golub’s personal long snapping coach, said. “Then imagine blindfolding the snapper. It’s pretty damn impressive.”

With no vision in his right eye and “pretty limited vision” in his left, Golub’s persevered through his sight impairment to walk on at Tulane in 2014. He became the first legally blind player to play in an FBS college football game against Central Florida on Oct. 3. Though the sophomore has only played in the one game this season, he battled to earn his way to Tulane and has inspired others along the way.

“Long snapping’s a lot of fun and what I’ve worked toward for a long time,” Golub said. “It’s great that all this work has brought me to where I am today.”

Though he gets around well enough without any aid, new environments with unfamiliar sidewalks and drop-offs prove challenging. While relying only on his left eye, Golub will hold things to read directly up to his face, use large text on his phone and has his computer read text aloud.

Skiing became an outlet for Golub growing up, but he was never interested in the “ideal sports for vision impaired” kids like swimming or track. He couldn’t play baseball, soccer and basketball. A fan of the New England Patriots all his life, Golub signed up to play football for the first time in the seventh grade.

Vision limitations demanded Golub play center in his first year and Bob Golub, Aaron Golub’s father, said his son wasn’t particularly good. Golub decided in his sophomore year of high school that a position change was needed in order to continue playing football.

He tried his hand at long snapping.

“He’d never done it but he thought that this was a good position that would allow him to play football past high school,” Bob Golub said. “It didn’t hurt that his vision wouldn’t be an issue.”

Rubio runs long-snapping camps across the country, and Golub arrived in the summer before his junior year in hopes that the special teams expert would teach him the skills and technique needed to be successful. Without Golub’s dad stationed next to him catching returned footballs, there would have been no distinguishing which camper was blind.

“The one thing with long-snapping is that it’s very similar to being a professional free-throw shooter,” Rubio said. “… If you get your form down, everything else will fall into place and with Aaron, it just took time for him to master the form.

“I think that when your form’s seamless and you do incorporate your whole body, you really don’t need your eyes.”

Rubio taught Golub “everything (he) knows.” The two text back and forth at least once a week, exchanging video for critique and advice.

But Rubio knows that without Golub’s devoted effort, playing for Tulane wouldn’t have been possible.

After a commitment to repetition, full progressions of Rubio-prescribed drills and hitting the weight room, Golub emerged as a high school graduate ranked No. 18 at long snapper in the nation, according to 247sports.com.

Tulane wasn’t the only school to recruit the eventual preferred walk-on, as Golub rejected an offer to play at the University of Illinois in favor of the Green Wave.  Now in his sophomore season, the key to taking the next step to becoming a regular starter is more consistency, Rubio said.

Golub doesn’t like talking about his vision, according to his dad. He doesn’t want special treatment on or off the field. He just wants to keep going through the motions, and inspire others to do the same.

“Aaron does like the fact that he is a role model and that people look at him and are inspired,” Bob Golub said. “People who have ailments to overcome look to Aaron, and know that they can tackle their obstacles too.”

Published on November 6, 2015 at 5:00 pm

Contact Liam: lpsull01@syr.edu