Mugo Mbuthia is proving you don't have to see everything to be a believer

Mugo Mbuthia doesn’t view the world through the same lens as most of the rest of us.

He was born with Optic Nerve Hypoplasia, or ONH, which is described as a congenital condition in which one or both optic nerves are underdeveloped at birth, leading to a spectrum of vision limitations depending on the person. It may be blurred vision, it could be outright blindness.

And while Mbuthia, an Eldorado High School junior, is not 100-percent blind, he is quite limited in what he can see and interpret.

For the last two months, he’s been seeing some of his world, for the first time, from a wrestling mat.

“To do what he’s doing, it can’t be easy,” Eagles head coach Scott Dotson said.

The 16-year-old junior arrived in New Mexico last summer from Johannesburg, South Africa. His sporting endeavors had always been limited to things like swimming and cricket, he said.

But he remembers full well as a boy experiencing WWE on his television with his friends  – “we loved it,” he said – and as he stepped foot on the Eldorado campus, Mbuthia thought that perhaps wrestling was one sport he could possibly manage even with his extremely impaired vision.“When I came to the U.S., when I found out wrestling was an option, I thought, cool, I can try that,” he said.

Mbuthia has wrestled primarily on the junior varsity; recently he collected his first varsity win over a competitor from Manzano. That was his only varsity match until Friday, when Mbuthia began wrestling in the 165-pound bracket of the Albuquerque Metro Championships at La Cueva. He lost his first match.

He may not win his bracket at metros, but his mere presence creates a wonderfully uplifting vibe.

“He’s a great kid,” marveled Dotson. “And every day, he asks, ‘What can I do better? Coach, can you watch me to see what I’m doing wrong?’ I think his motivation to fit in was his motivation to learn wrestling.”

He has become a very popular figure, both inside the Eldorado wrestling room and on the campus as a whole.

But, there is also this plain fact: to be a wrestler, and be nearly blind, does come with certain obstacles.

“One of the challenges I have is, when you wrestle and break contact, and they shoot, I don’t have fast reflexes,” Mbuthia said. “If they shoot while we’re still in contact, I can still feel their movement and start trying to sprawl. When the hands break contact and they shoot, it’s hard for me.”

Generally, he added, he and his opponent are connected by the hands at the start, but if that contact is broken, a whistle is supposed to be sounded and the match reset.

His first varsity match proved to be an exciting finish.

“It was. I had to fight blood and sweat for that. It was a tiring one,” he said. He won by pin near the end.

He admitted he is still trying to learn how wrestling’s scoring is measured. Dotson said Mbuthia can glance out the side of his eye to see the scoreboard during a match.

With the regular season nearing an end, Mbuthia said he was glad to have taken this leap.

“I wanted to do it mostly just to keep busy and exercise,” he said, “but I kind of wanted to challenge myself.”

Dotson characterized Mbuthia as an ideal student-athlete, given his coaching methods.

“I feel like even when I’m coaching, I’m not a very good describer in words. I’m really hands on,” he said. “I would demonstrate on him, and that helps. He didn’t have to see it, he would feel it.”

This is important, since Mbuthia has an extremely limited range of what he can see in front of him. An opponent standing 5 feet away who decides to shoot his legs, he said, would be near impossible for him to detect or avoid.

“I can’t use the full eye,” he said. “I’m looking at stuff from the corner of my eye.”

Mbuthia is extremely soft-spoken and immensely likeable and, Dotson said, more accomplished on the mat at this stage than the young man believes.

“He’s exciting to watch,” Dotson said. “The last match he had on JV, he needed a takedown with five seconds to win, and he did. He’s better than he thinks he is.”

To that end, Mbuthia said he didn’t consider himself as being an inspiration to others, though clearly that is the case.

“I mean, I hope I am,” he said quietly, breaking into a smile. “I hope I’m inspiring.”

James Yodice covers prep sports for the Journal. You can reach him at jyodice@abqjournal.com or via X at @JamesDYodice.