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Blind walk-on long-snaps on extra point in USC win over Western Michigan

We’re still in Week 1, but there might not be a cooler or more heartfelt moment than what we witnessed at the Coliseum Saturday evening.

A few years back, the Pete Carroll-led USC Trojans football team essentially adopted Jake Olson, a teenage fan at the time suffering from cancer of the retina in his right eye (he lost his left eye when he was less than one year old). It was subsequently determined that Olson would need the right eye removed; on his final day of sight prior to the surgery that would leave him blind for the rest of his life, he chose to attend a Trojans football practice.

Fast-forward roughly five years, and Olson walked on to the USC football team as a long-snapper in 2015. He took his first live-drill reps with the Trojans in September of that year, then snapped for the team in the 2016 spring game. While he didn’t see any game action either year, Saturday, at the end of USC’s closer-than-expected win over Western Michigan, Olson finally got to take his place on the field in an actual game with the rest of his special teams teammates.

It’s more than a game.

Jake Olson’s first snap in a live @usc_athletics game is the @OpusBank #12Best Moment. https://t.co/VRxY5g3NI1

— Pac-12 Network (@Pac12Network) September 3, 2017


That. Is. Awesome. Again, it’ll be hard to top this scene this season.

And, for those who are curious, Olson is the second legally-blind player to appear in an NCAA football game. The first? Tulane’s Aaron Golub, who long-snapped on an extra point for the Green Wave in October of 2015.