SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. (AP) -- For fifth-grader Airam Duarte, every day on the cross country trail feels more like an obstacle course.
She's legally blind, and her sight only goes about as far as her outstretched hand.
What she can see are mostly shadows of light and dark.
Airam was born with optic nerve hypoplasia, a condition developed during pregnancy, in which the optic nerves fail to fully develop.
Throughout her childhood, her eyesight has hindered her ability to do something as simple as playing with other kids.
Then one day, Valley View Elementary School posted cross country sign-ups.
"The first day, no one told me she was coming," said her coach, Dianne Kogan of Coronado Elementary School. "So I ran with her. She is so positive and so open. She just wants to run."
Airam not only wants to run. She wants to be fast. "Super fast," she says.
But at the heart of it, she's just in it for the fun of it.
"When she started, she took about 29 minutes to run 1.75 miles, and now she is running it in about 20 minutes and running about 50 percent of the race versus about 25 percent," Kogan said.
"Her goals have changed. At the beginning, she just wanted to finish the race, now she wants to run the whole thing and to beat some of the other runners."
While the rest of her team warmed up with a quick lap, Airam waited for her running aid, Diana Valenzuela, a second-grade teacher at Coronado.
As fate would have it, the 30-year-old Valenzuela is also one of Airam's godmothers.
Valenzuela met Airam's mother, Erika Joyner, when the two were in kindergarten at Naco.
Even though the two don't live far from each other, meshing schedules proved difficult. In the past, the two would get together for quality time only a couple of times each year.
When the two are out for a run, Valenzuela gives direction about pot holes, sharp rocks and curves in the path.
Rarely do they get a chance to walk a course before a race, and one of the 10-year-old's persistent questions is how much further it is to the finish line.
"Usually I encourage her," Valenzuela said. "She'll ask, 'Are we almost there?' and I'll say 'Yes,' and then it will be longer than she thought it should be, and she'll say, 'I thought we were almost there!' Then I'll tell her there's a big Gatorade waiting for her at the end."
Joyner never wanted her daughter's disability to detach her from social interaction.
"Usually kids with her disability are shy and don't like to interact with other kids. But she can talk your ears off," Joyner said.
The family found out about Airam's visual impairment when she was about six months old.
As she grew up, Joyner said the only difference she noticed was that it took Airam a little longer to learn the "normal" things, like navigating the kitchen well enough to make something in the microwave.
That's been the only big difference between raising Airam compared to her two younger sisters.
"It used to be, she couldn't do what the rest of the kids do," Joyner said. "She'd say, 'They don't want to play with me.' I'd explain that it's hard, because you kind of hold them back, and that would make her sad. But now she's part of a team, and she's able to run at her own pace."
Since she started school, Airam has had an aid from the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind by her side while in school and often out in the community.
After living in rural southern Arizona, Joyner said the family is already preparing for a future move to a larger city.
Airam will never be able to drive, so being in a place with a good public transportation system will be key in Airam's self-sufficiency as she gets older.
Kogan said after Airam joined the team this year, complaints from her teammates about being too sore or it being too hot have decreased noticeably.
At the team's first meet, held at Col. Smith Middle School on Fort Huachuca, Kogan said she brought all of Airam's paperwork, just in case there were issues with having an adult run with her.
Instead, everyone had heard about her already, and as Airam finished the run, the six teams at the meet lined the track to the finish and cheered her on.
In the spring, she's planning to run track.
"She's doing really good," Kogan said. "She is capable of doing anything anyone else can. We just need to make sure she doesn't run into anything while she's doing it."
