Emporia High School freshman Charlie Wilks is scheduled to be featured Tuesday evening on the “E:60” program on ESPN. The show will air at 6 p.m., according to Ben Houser, senior producer for the news magazine.
Houser and an ESPN crew were in Emporia in December 2008 to film a piece on Charlie, according to an earlier story. Charlie, despite his blindness, then played nose guard on the Emporia Middle School football team. This season, he played on the EHS freshman team.
Houser had been intrigued when he heard about the blind junior-high football player.
“I just found it really intriguing and thought, How is it possible that a boy who is blind is playing football? Real football, not like, just let Charlie go in and play in a play. He literally plays,” Houser said. “I think that’s what struck me as unique in the story.”
Charlie became blind after two surgeries to remove a brain tumor that was discovered when he was 5 years old.
He has not let the lack of sight hamper his participation in academics or athletics, or anything else. As a sixth-grader, he was one of 60 students nationally, and the only Kansas student, who qualified for the National Braille Challenge in Los Angeles. He finished fourth in his age group.
During a two-hour interview between Houser and Charlie, the producer had been struck by the depth of Charlie’s comments.
“In fact, he said that getting his sight back would be a low point in his life,” Houser recalled. “His point was that when you go blind, your whole outlook on life changes.”
Charlie explained the advantages of not judging people by how they looked, and how having sight would reveal to him more than he perhaps wanted to see.
“That’s just so profound for anybody to say,” Houser said.
And Houser enjoyed Charlie’s light-hearted side, too, which showed itself often.
He had been captivated by Charlie’s personality, “how funny he is and how intelligent.” The producer decided to utilize the teen’s gregarious personality for the show by letting him take his first turn on the national television stage.
“The most unique thing we did at ESPN was that we let Charlie be a reporter,” Houser said.
Charlie interviewed the people in his life, from his mother to his grandfather, who played eight years with the Kansas City Chiefs. The young man and the rest of the EMS Vikings team were special guests at a Chiefs football practice, and Charlie met and talked with National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell.
“The story comes to life on its own,” Houser said.