By the end of the competition, she defeated the No. 1 ranked Franchesca Durand before falling in the finals to four-time national champion Carrie Chandler.

“At the finals, I was kind of nervous,” Ohashi said. “I got too nervous because it was the first time for me to go to nationals.”

Ohashi, who is currently ranked No. 3 nationally among sighted athletes, is legally blind. So far this season, she has already qualified for the International Blind Sports Federation World Judo Championships and the Para Pan-American Games.

But for Ohashi, that isn’t good enough. She wants to be the best among sighted competitors, too.

“I want to go to Beijing and get a gold medal,” Ohashi said. “I want to go to both Olympics, like the Paralympics and the regular Olympics and get a gold medal at both.”

Judo roots

Ohashi, 18, grew up in Japan and began practicing judo when she was 15 years old, because she wanted to get into a Japanese high school, she said.

“The teachers were saying that if I got a black belt, I could go to any high school I wanted,” Ohashi said. “In Japan to go to high school is very hard. So I decided to get a black belt.”

Ohashi didn’t know any judo when she started, but it didn’t take her long to accomplish her goal.

“I applied for the black belt, and I beat like five people in one week. I got the black belt and I thought, oh this is cool,” Ohashi said. “I got the black belt in one week.”

Ohashi wanted to come to the US because her mother was born and grew up here, so she went to the USA Judo Web site and began emailing Ed Liddie, the coach at the training center.

“(Liddie) told me to come to the Lake Placid training camp about a year ago, so I did,” Ohashi said. “He saw me and he wanted me to come (to the Olympic Training Center) to train. I met him and I felt like he was a good coach.”

“Grace, are you blind?”

When Ohashi came to the U.S. to compete, very few knew she was visually impaired.  In Japan, individuals who are visually impaired are looked at as second class citizens, so her parents tried to cover it up, Ohashi said.

“If you are blind, you cannot have a job. You can have just like, very cheap jobs. My parents wanted me to have a good job, so they burned my papers,” Ohashi said.

It wasn’t until February that the coaches knew Ohashi was blind, when Myles Porter, another visually impaired judo athlete, brought it to the coaches’ attention.

“One day, I was like ‘Grace, are you blind?’ So I went and told (coach) and he goes ‘She’s not blind!’ I was like, ‘Ed, she just ran into the wall. She is blind!’” Porter said. “Then we finally got her tested, and Ed was like ‘No wonder in practice when I say stuff you’d just look like you were annoyed. You looked like you were annoyed, so I just didn’t say anything to you anymore.”

Since then, Ohashi’s relationship with Liddie has improved, and he doesn’t think she is annoyed anymore, she said.

“Coach Eddie is a great coach,” Ohashi said. “I feel like I’m getting better every day. Training is very good.”

And her love for the sport continues to grow. Her favorite part about judo is throwing people, she said.

“When you throw people, they get mad.” Ohashi said. “But in judo, no one gets mad when you throw people. Throwing people is my favorite.”