Sask. mixed martial artist competes despite genetic eye disorder

WATCH: An 11-year-old athlete from Saskatoon with a rare genetic eye disorder wants to share his inspiring story with the world.

An 11-year old mixed martial artist from Saskatoon wants to share his inspiring story with the world by becoming the 2025 Youth Athlete of the Year.

Harley Lorenz had been following his dad to the gym for a few years before he finally started training for wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

“It was kind of hard at the time because there are two differences,” said Harley Lorenz, contestant for 2025 Youth Athlete of the Year. “One you don’t want to be on your back or else you’re out. And the other one is you want to be on your back, that’s the winning position. So it’s pretty different.”

Not long after he started training, he was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called X-linked retinoschisis (XLRS) which causes migraines, bright flashing dots and eventual vision loss.

“One of the specialists said that contact sports were now off the table,” said Adam Lorenz, Harley’s dad. “He was wearing a modern martial arts shirt and told him, I love wrestling and jiu-jitsu, and they let him know that you won’t be doing that anymore.”

But Lorenz says the mental health benefits of his son continuing to train and compete outweighed the risks.

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“Mental health wise, you can still do what you love to do despite your disability we’ll call it, or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “And I said, maybe we should continue with this, and one of the other experts agreed. As long as it’s safe, I think we should keep him in what he loves to do and what he’s going to succeed at.”

And succeed he has. Shortly after returning to training, he won his first gold medal in a competition, and the wins keep coming.

“He became a back to back provincial champ and all the things, so it’s worked out very well,” said Lorenz.

But training and competing doesn’t come easy for Harley.

“My vision gets blurry, but most of it is there right now,” he said. “If I look at you, there’s a lot of dots, so it kind of wears on my eyes and makes it hard to see. And they’re kind of annoying because when I’m in the dark, they’re so bright so it’s kind of hard to go to sleep sometimes.”

When Harley’s eyes bug him too much, he closes them and just trusts his instincts.

“That’s why I like wrestling and jiu-jitsu because you’re really close up, so you don’t really need to see it,” said Lorenz. “And once you’ve trained for a while, you can feel their weight to balance them off or balance yourself, and you can feel the positions just by touching and knowing where you are.”

Now Harley’s a finalist in the 2025 Youth Athlete of the Year competition with a chance to win $25,000 and be featured in an ad in Sports Illustrated.

Beyond the recognition, Harley says he wants to use this platform to share his message with someone who needs to hear it.

“I would like to prove by doing this that even if you have a disability, you can do really great things and you should not give up or make excuses,” he said.

And Lorenz says he’s inspired by the resilience he sees in his son.

“You can see the resilience the martial arts and having XLRS has built,” said Lorenz. “Before he walked out for one of his gold medal matches, he goes dad, do you think it helps that I see millions of exploding dots in my eyes while I’m trying to fight? I’m like, yeah, that’s probably harder to deal with. And then he went out there and won his gold medal. What resilience and perseverance.”

Harley says he wants to win nationals when he turns 16 so he can go train in Japan.

Meanwhile he’s first in his group for voting in the competition. The rounds reset each week, this round ends Thursday night.