Benay Gozkaman is a member of the IMS girls track team. Her journey to competition at IMS has more turns than a 3000m run. Gozkaman hails from the city of Gaziantep, Turkey, around one hour from Istanbul, a city known for its pistachio trees and social activities. Gozkaman talked about coming to the United States, specifically Kalona

Gozkaman says at first she though she was going to go to California and love the big city, but when she heard she was going to Kalona she couldn’t believe a small town was where she was going. She added that she enjoyed her host family, and her friends.

While adjustment as a foreign exchange student living nearly 6000 miles from home would be difficult enough for most to handle competing on the track Gozkaman also has another hurdle to overcome in competition. She is blind. Though never having participated in track before Gozkaman talked about what helped her make the decision to join the IMS track team.

“I was eating a lot here, and I just didn’t want to be really fat or something,” Gozkaman says. “I just wanted to do a sport or something so it was a time that track season was going to start, and I heard about blind runner, that they could do that, so I though I could do that.”

For the full interview with Benay Gozkaman, her guide runner Michaela Gingerich and IMS girls track Coach Marty Gingerich tune into tonight’s edition of the PM Sports Page at 6PM on the one to count on for today’s local sports coverage AM and FM KCII.