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The last thing Jake Olson ever saw was a USC football practice. He picked it. Olson was born with retinal cancer. They took his left eye when he was 10 months old. He grew up seeing out of one. Then in 2009, when he was 12, the doctors told him the other one had to come out too. There was a date on the calendar for the end of his sight. Pete Carroll was the head coach at USC then, and somebody told him about a kid in Orange County who loved the Trojans and was about to go blind. So Carroll brought him in. Team meetings. Practices. The sideline on Saturdays. Not a photo op, an actual membership. And when the day came, the last day Jake Olson would ever see anything, he chose how to spend it. He went to USC football practice. Then they took his eye and the lights went out, and he was 12 years old. Here is what he did with the next six years. He learned to snap a football. Blind. By feel, counting steps, listening. In 2015 he walked on at USC as a long snapper. Not an honorary one. A player on the roster. And on September 2, 2017, against Western Michigan, USC lined up for an extra point and sent Jake Olson onto the field to snap it. He got it back clean. The kick was good. He is the only completely blind player ever to appear in a Division I football game. Pete Carroll was in Seattle by then, coaching the Seahawks. He watched it on television. "I couldn't stop crying. It was thrilling." Olson wrote this afterward. "If you hadn't made me a member of the Trojan Family when I was 12, I don't know where my life would be." Now here is the part almost nobody knows. On January 17, 2025, Jake Olson and his wife Audrey had a son. They named him Rowan. Rowan was born with retinoblastoma. In both eyes. The same cancer that took his father's sight. He went through chemotherapy as an infant. Last September it ended. His doctor says Rowan has excellent vision and appears to be cancer free. The family went to the Coliseum. They put the baby down on the field where his dad snapped that football. "Watching Rowan crawl around out there on that grass, it was emotional in a way I didn't expect." Now the honest part. Appears cancer free is careful language, and that kid will be getting his eyes checked for a long time. Nobody is spiking a ball yet. But a coach once gave a 12 year old boy one good day before the dark, and that boy grew up and played football for him, and now his son can see. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap