SANDY — Quinn Price never raised his head from its bowed position, but a grin spread across his face and he couldn't restrain a compliment despite near constant admonishments from the officials for spectators to stay quiet.

"Good play on your defense, guys," the 19-year-old Smithfield man hissed to his goalball team. "I love your defense!"

Price, who like his team members is visually impaired, knows how valuable defense is. He made the Men's National Championship Goalball Team, the Utah Explosion, based almost completely on his ability to stop the weighted, jingling ball from entering his team's goal.

"Defense is his strength," said his father, Rod Price, who sat beside him on the bench Friday while Quinn coached a youth goalball team for the first time. "I am just his eyes, but quite often, he can hear what they're doing, and he knows what happened before I can tell him."

Price and other members of both the men's and women's adult teams volunteered to coach teams in Friday's Youth Goalball Tournament at Crescent View Middle School. It was a tournament that allowed visually impaired or physically disabled children from around the state to compete in a sport that was created with their needs in mind. Organizers took students from around the state and assigned them to teams and then assigned a coach. It's an event many of the young people look forward to for months.

"It's a chance for recreation. They experience success, they gain experience with their peers in the visually impaired community and they're building a community that they can grow with," said Marshal Givens, a teacher from the Tooele School District. "It's the one thing that's designed specifically for visually impaired (athletes.)"

Givens, like many teachers of visually impaired students in Utah, teaches the sport to his students and encourages young people to participate. He was at the school Friday to watch second-grader Raelei Hadlock, Stansbury Park, compete for the first time.

"It was really good," the 8-year-old said after collecting her medal. "It didn't hurt. I'll play again."

Goalball is a sport played on a gymnasium floor with raised lines. There is a goal at each end that each of the two teams must defend against the other team. The squads take turns rolling (throwing is illegal) a weighted, soundmaking ball at the other team's goal. The opposing team's three players then spread out and try to block the ball with their bodies. If they are successful, they then have 10 seconds to roll the ball back at the other team.

Friday was Quinn Price's first experience as a coach. He was enjoying it so much, he hesitated when asked which he preferred, playing or coaching.