By Becky Barnes-Israel

It began with a simple text from my son’s swim coach. Then another text. Then another.

“Ben is not doing the sets I write on the whiteboard, but says he is. He’s a good kid so can you talk to him?” My son claimed he was doing what he saw on the board. I was perplexed. Maybe the coach was too busy with other swimmers to see Ben was doing what he was supposed to in practice. I blew it off and tried not to think about it.

A couple weeks later Ben’s music teacher said he was unable to read some of the notes in the music and felt I should get his eyes checked. I was faced with the vision issue again and could no longer avoid it.

Suddenly everything made sense. He probably couldn’t see the board at swim practice either!

At the optometrist we learned Ben’s vision had changed significantly and he needed glasses. The optometrist also recommended prescription goggles. This opened pandora’s box for us. I had so many questions. Where do you buy prescription goggles? Are they expensive? Necessary?

I turned to our coach and asked what he recommended we do. He explained that we needed to calculate the diopter strength that matched Ben’s prescription and then find goggles that had that diopter. He recommended the Speedo Vanquisher Corrective Goggles.

There was no need to special order them from an optometrist because local swim stores such as Splashwear Aquatics carry them in stock and they are affordable. Splashwear also has other optical options to choose from! With the Tusa/Tabata View Goggles, you get to choose a lens for each eye, for those who have different prescriptions in each eye! You simply order the parts kit (which comes with a non prescription pair of lenses) and put your prescription lenses in and you have a custom set of optical goggles....perfect for you!


After a few weeks of wearing the prescription goggles, Ben’s race times began to improve drastically. He shaved 26 seconds off his 50 fly, which he attributes to being able to clearly see the wall due to the RX goggles and this in turn gives him a boost in confidence in his flip turn.

What seemed like an overwhelming change, easily proved itself a change for the good.