An intriguing event occurs prior to AJ Buckley taking the wrestling mat. He’s not practicing defensive footwork in his head or running through takedown sequences. “Spanish Joint” by D’Angelo is playing for him. Just in his head, not through earbuds. The song’s groove, rhythm, and subtle confidence. It’s his ritual, his reset button, his method of settling in before a match that requires all of his mental and physical resources.
Alvin “AJ” Buckley Jr., a junior at Jackson’s Mississippi School for the Blind, started wrestling in the seventh grade. He suffers from Retinitis Pigmentosa, a hereditary eye condition that can cause night blindness and progressively impair peripheral vision over time. He can still see a little. However, something changed in the sixth grade when the lights went out during an exam and he was unable to see the letters on a keyboard in front of him. He was attending a school that wasn’t designed to meet his needs. Whether he was prepared for it or not, a change was on the horizon.
Alvin Buckley Sr., his father, recalls those early transitional days as truly difficult. New classmates, new school, new everything. Children don’t always settle into new environments with ease, and AJ was no exception. He was unsure, adjusting, and still figuring out his place. However, his mother, Markita Kitchens, a former cheerleader and wrestler at MSB, had a quiet confidence about what the surroundings could do for her son. She had experienced it firsthand. She was aware that under the correct circumstances, the shell could come off. Yes, it did.
At MSB, wrestling isn’t exactly a well-established, well-funded program. Only 41 high schools in Mississippi offer wrestling programs, and the sport has far less cultural significance than it does in states farther north. It never fully recovered in the area after the Southeastern Conference discontinued it as a conference sport in 1981. Early in the season, AJ practiced in a padded room that was hardly larger than a two-car garage with his coach, himself, and anyone else he could convince to drill takedowns with him. That picture conveys a message about a particular type of obstinacy that doesn’t wait for perfect circumstances to arise, rather than failure or limitations.
Observing athletes like AJ gives one the impression that people are just as drawn to the sport as they are to it. He’ll be the first to acknowledge that when he first started wrestling, he thought it would be similar to the WWE. According to him, he was “played.” Nevertheless, he came to appreciate it in the same way that things do when you stick with them long enough to stop acting and start learning.
It’s not just the wrestling that makes AJ’s story remarkable. He has learned to play six instruments since coming to MSB: trumpet, trombone, saxophone, baritone, piano, and drums. He has also qualified for the state tournament several times. Instead of using sheet music, band director Kimble Funchess teaches through memorization and repetition, requiring a level of focus that subtly prepares students for everything else they do. The relationship between music and sports may not be accidental. Patience is needed for both. Distraction is penalized by both. People who remain in the room long after it becomes difficult are eventually rewarded by both.
AJ doesn’t discuss his disability with the weight that some might anticipate. “I never looked at my disability as a problem,” he has stated, “because if I can see something, I can see it, if I don’t, I don’t.” It’s an incredibly tidy way of looking at the world; there’s no act of struggle, no demand to be seen as courageous. Just someone who assessed his situation, accepted it, and continued to compete.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that AJ’s actions in that tiny Jackson, Mississippi gym have significance beyond victories and defeats. For blind athletes, wrestlers in underprivileged states, and anyone who has ever been placed in a predicament they didn’t choose and had to decide what to do next, he is subtly changing what people think is possible match by match.
