The moment was filmed and posted to Twitter by Zeeland Public Schools, who wrote: “And you thought March Madness was exciting.” So far, the video has amassed more than 640,000 views.
It was also shared in Reddit’s “Humans Being Bros” forum on Thursday by an anonymous poster under the username u/ameen__shaikh. There, it has received more than 29,000 upvotes and over 300 comments from Redditors who called the video “magnificent” and used the post as an opportunity to talk about human echolocation.
In the video, Jules Hoogland, who reportedly plays for the Zeeland Public Schools Unified Basketball team, can be seen preparing to make her shot while the entire crowd sits in total silence. A woman uses a large pole to tap the basketball hoop so that Hoogland can “hear” where to throw. After a few taps, Hoogland aims, jumps and scores, causing the crowd to go wild.
“She definitely heard the cheers,” wrote u/ameen__shaikh.
Redditors were charmed by the video and said that it restored their faith in humanity.
“That is awesome on so many levels,” said u/lameoldperson.
“It’s the crowd for me. Everyone in that room participating in the action, staying silent and then going CRAZY for her after…Thanks for restoring my faith in humanity, Reddit!” exclaimed u/Danger_Zebra.
Redditor u/TraditionalEffect546 added: “Awwww I kinda cried a little. So sweet of everyone.”
Some commenters even held a brief discussion about echolocation.
“That’s some echolocation s**t lol. Super wholesome too!” said u/its_the_luge.
However, u/serpiente21 argued: “No echoes were used so it’s not echolocation If this girl wanted to use echolocation, she would have to scream or makes some noise and then listen to the sound coming back to her.”
According to Science Daily, human echolocation is a process by which humans “produce a clicking sound with their mouths and listen to the reflected sound waves to ‘see’ their surroundings.”
Though the technique may sound complicated, a study published in PLOS ONE revealed that humans can learn echolocation in just ten weeks.
“When people echolocate, it’s not like now they can see again. But echolocation does provide information about the space that’s around people, and that would otherwise not be available without vision. It allows them to orient themselves and so on,” Lore Thaler, one of the study’s authors, told Smithsonian Magazine.
Speaking to Gizmodo, Thaler added: “What made us explore it in the first place was that it is just such a fascinating skill and that it has such great potential to help people who are blind and to investigate neuroplasticity on a more general level.”
