For Saxony Lutheran soccer team, where there's a Wills, there's laughter, inspiration and a way

"Tell me about Heather Wills."

It's not exactly a punchline in a stand-up comedy routine, but any time it's uttered around the Saxony Lutheran girls soccer team, it seems to evoke laughter.

Not a mocking type of laughter, but a knowing type. The type that tells you a lot without you really being told anything.

"She's the most unique person that I've ever met," Crusader senior captain Maddie Brune says. "I can't exactly tell you a word to describe her."

"She's unique. She's one of the most unique people I know," senior classmate and teammate Brianna Mueller says.

"She's unique," says Sam Sides, Saxony's athletic director and coach of the girls basketball team, for which Wills also played.

Notice a trend?

"She's a mess. She really is," Saxony Lutheran girls soccer coach Garrett Fritsche says.

He smiles, thinking of some mental composite sketch of his senior soccer player that, much as it does for everyone else, makes him chuckle before adding, "She's a great kid."

Perhaps it's just that a unique situation breeds a unique personality.

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Saxony Lutheran's Heather Wills holds her prosthetic eye in her hand.GLENN LANDBERG ~ Southeast Missourian

Every sport requires a different set of skills, but there's always one trait that comes up no matter what the athletic endeavor -- vision. Does a soccer player see one move ahead? Does a basketball player see the court? Does a football player see the hole? Does a baseball or softball player see the spin of the ball out of a pitcher's hand?

Wills knows vision is something most take for granted, because they've never understood what it is to be without.

For the Perryville native, it began at the age of 2. That's when she developed a cataract in her left eye. Soon after, it was glaucoma, passed down in the gene pool. By the time she was 3 years old, she'd had nine surgeries -- nine surgeries that didn't take. Her retina detached, and she lost all vision in her left eye.

A year later, she was, inexplicably, beginning her journey in soccer.

"She's a very quiet person, so a lot of people don't know much about her. But once you learn about what she's been through in her life -- I don't know, nine or 10 surgeries. She doesn't tell people. She doesn't talk about it. But when you find that out, I think you look at her differently," says Mueller. "I look at her differently.

Saxony Lutheran senior Heather Wills covers her good eye. Wills has been blind in her left eye since age 3.GLENN LANDBERG ~ Southeast Missourian

"Wow. In that way, she's an inspiration to me. Sometimes me and a couple of my friends will put a hand over one eye and say, 'What would it be like to be Heather?' I've tried shooting a basketball ball with one eye and it throws everything off. [Or] kicking a soccer ball. You are completely blind on one side, and it's incredible she does not use that as an excuse, ever. She overcomes one of the biggest disadvantages you could have in sports. I think that is absolutely incredible."

A soccer player since her pre-K days, Wills picked up basketball in fourth grade and pursued it to the end, when her Crusaders fell just a handful of points short of winning a state championship this winter. It was her first year as a varsity player, and she saw limited minutes, but she did play regularly at the JV level as both a freshman and a junior (sophomore year, she tore her ACL, MCL and meniscus). She offered solid ball handling -- something the JV team needed -- and Sides had no qualms about using her.

"We just let her go with everybody else. She did everything everyone else did, and we didn't make any special accommodations for her," Sides says. "However people might think of it, as a handicap or an excuse for not doing something, she's never used it as an excuse.

"[The blindness] has got to affect her depth perception. ... I can't even imagine playing a competitive sport with that drawback. But her attitude has always been great, and she's battled through it the best she can, and she's had some success."

But basketball was never where Wills felt most comfortable. The compressed playing surface felt more claustrophobic than the soccer field, and the chaos swirling around her was harder to adjust to than when she had space to position herself more appropriately on the soccer field.

"The less I get blindsided," she says, quite literally, "the more I like it."

Wills grew up playing rec soccer and travel soccer out of Perryville before making the move to Saxony for her freshman year of high school. It was a transition both on the field and off.

"I was really nervous when I came in freshman year," Wills says. "But as soon as I came in, they treated me like family and supported me and lifted me up. And they thought my eye was awesome. I got questions all the time about it, and they wanted to know everything, and they never treated me any differently than anyone else."

Wills is easily overshadowed amongst a senior class of prolific, gregarious, multi-sport student-athletes, but she plays regular and significant minutes for her team.

"She knows the game. She's smart. It's just going out there and doing it and being confident," Fritsche says. "She's got great ability, and she's been a huge part of what we've been able to do the last four years.

"The players that have come from Perryville, they've had to adapt to a different system. It's more possession, not near as much kick and run, that type of style. She's had to start from scratch starting freshman year. ... That's been tough, but four years later, she's done it."

Wills has been a utility knife of sorts, playing on the left side as an attacking winger or in a deeper wide midfield role. She's most comfortable on the left, putting her blindside along the touchline, where there is less action to have to process. But she did spend some time last year filling in for an injured Brune in center midfield, a position that put her in the thick of things and required 360-degree awareness.

Most of the time, though, you can find her high up the field on the left. Others are relied on more for their goal scoring, but Wills plays a role that helps make everyone better, whether it's putting pressure on the opposition's back line to try to win possession high up the field, putting in a quick touch or flick-on in build-up play or helping stretch the defense to create more space for others to work.

"[Fritsche] just put me up top and said, 'Go. Be aggressive.' He didn't really treat me any different," Wills says. "Some people forgot about my blind spot, which is normal; people can't think about that 24/7, but I was treated like everybody else."

Wills says she's always had an initial meeting with her coaches to talk about her eye, but it doesn't come up all that often. Her teammates have grown more communicative with her on the field, and her coach agrees that managing the situation is mostly a secondary concern.

"If anybody else goes out there with one eye, even if you go out and close one eye and try to play, it's like, 'Wow, that's tough,'" Fritsche says. "Since she's grown up with it, she's learned to utilize what she's able to do, and you can't tell as much. Coming in and you hear, 'This person's blind in one eye,' and they're playing soccer and playing at a pretty high level. It's like, 'Really? How does that work?' But overall, it's been less difficult than you might expect."

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Saxony Lutheran's Heather Wills controls the ball in a recent game against Cape Girardeau Central.GLENN LANDBERG ~ Southeast Missourian

Wills has never wanted to be treated any differently than anyone else, and on the field, she hasn't been. Off the field is a different story, where kids can be cruel.

After initially losing vision in her left eye, Wills was fitted with a contact lens in the first grade, largely, she says, because kids would stare at her. In the fourth grade, she went to an eye specialist and got a shell like the one she still wears today, a thicker cover that is painted to look exactly like a real eye. So real, in fact, it could easily fool someone at first glance -- say, like when Wills wants to prank a teacher (we'll leave the rest to your imagination).

The shell helped matters, and some of the taunting died down by the time she was entering middle school.

"People would call me 'One Eye' and those stereotypical names," Wills says. "I just learned to shove it off and focus on the positive things. I mean, why focus on the negative things that got me down?

"I think at first, I struggled with it and it got to me, but I learned how to deal with it and look at the positive side of it and maybe one day show people who face a setback to push through it."

To think that Wills' personality and propensity to generate laughter has nothing to do with the circumstances she's been forced to deal with is foolish. Laughter is one of the most common ways humans cope with difficult obstacles, and it has served Wills well.

"If I laugh about it, they can't use it to tear me down," she says.

Her reputation as a prankster and oddball has not only helped Wills soak in whatever life has thrown at her, it's also made her a valuable teammate -- one who can provide levity in frustrating situations.

"I think whenever things get super serious or everyone feels like there's so much tension in the room, she can break that tension," Mueller says. "She's just that person that's kind of chill about everything, and I think that's essential. We need that -- when everyone feels the pressure, she can relieve some of that.

"She's a funny girl. You never know. Whenever someone talks about Heather, whenever someone talks to Heather, you never know what she's going to say."

She's certainly left an impression during her four years at Saxony Lutheran.

"She'll say some things that are kind of off the wall. She's got a quirky sense of humor, but she's fun to be around," Sides says. "... She's a unique individual, that's for sure."

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Saxony Lutheran senior Heather Wills.GLENN LANDBERG ~ Southeast Missourian

Once they stop laughing, they all tell the same story. This, apparently, is part of the Heather Wills legend.

"I'm pretty sure they had a pretty funny story about Coach Sides," Fritsche says.

They do.

It was one of the first basketball practices as freshmen, and the Crusaders huddled around Sides. Surely there was some serious message about expectations and hard work and reaching potential, but nobody talks about the subject matter, if they can recall it at all.

"Her eye popped out and hit the ground," Brune says. "Coach is like, 'What was that?' ... He didn't know at the time that she had a fake eye."

Talk about an icebreaker.

"Her eye fell out onto the ground, and it bounced, and Coach Sides looked and thought it was a quarter or something," Mueller says. "... Like, whose eye pops out of their head?"

Talk about a first impression.

"I don't know what you say in that situation," Sides says. "I told her that's the first time in my career that's ever happened."

Sides has had a long, storied hall-of-fame career filled with many student-athletes; he can think of one or two who faced significant physical limitations -- including cerebral palsy -- but talks about the admiration he has for Wills, who never asked to take a drill off or go at half speed because she couldn't see out of one eye.

Her steadfast attitude toward equal treatment has paid off in the most unexpected of ways -- an opportunity to play soccer in college.

The phone call came when Wills was at work. It was Deno Merrick, women's soccer head coach at Missouri Baptist, and he wanted to know whether Wills would be willing to come to campus for a visit.

"I was really shocked," Wills says. "I went to the back of my work and was like, 'Women's soccer coach? What? How do you even know who I am?'"

Wills admits she wasn't really considering college athletics, but her visit was followed by a tryout which led to an offer and, now, a future in soccer.

She would love to study physical therapy -- an interest she developed after her knee injury -- and says doctors have told her it's not out of the realm of possibility that future medical advances could provide an opportunity to restore sight in her eye. But the future is something Wills considers only part of the picture, and right now, she is embracing the moment.

"This is right now," she says.

The reality sounds crazy. If Wills were to be hit hard enough -- she was popped hard enough in eighth grade to black out -- there is always the chance she could lose sight in her right eye. She believes, though, that worrying about that can only take away from her team. She'll leave the apprehension to her mom.

"She was always a nervous wreck," Wills says. "... And she hates when I head the ball. I think that's what makes me love it even more."

Wills has never focused on the dark side of things, and that's how she's arrived at this point, causing others to break into fits of laughter at the mere mention of her name and helping her team attempt to bring home a second straight Class 1 state championship, a journey that continues in a state quarterfinal on the road at Principia on Wednesday. The Crusaders expect their success to continue.

"I think it's just because we treat each other like family and want it so bad," Wills says. "We have a championship attitude, and think our connection with each other is awesome. It's like nothing I've ever seen before."

How ironic her choice of words.

One also might call it unique circumstances, and where Wills is concerned, there might not be a more perfect word.