SAN ANTONIO — UTSA quarterback Frank Harris excels at his sport, helping UTSA rise to the top of Conference USA this past season. But what many don't know is Harris has a severe astigmatism. Or at least he had one until recently.
Frank Harris already stands out. He's a star player who brought his team to the Frisco Bowl in December. But in high school before coming to UTSA, instead of seeing clear images, they were always blurry, both on and off the field.
"I guess that I was so used to it, but some things were blurry trying to look too far," he said. "But I was kind of used to it, so I kind of just adapted to it."
Contacts helped, so he was able to have no problem launching a ball 45 yards for a touchdown, but because of his astigmatism he constantly had to adjust to make his eyeball see the football.
"But as you can tell in some videos, I would always rub my eyes because they started to get a little blurry," he said.
"You'll often hear like the football analogy... that the eye is shaped like the football," said Dr. Bobby Saenz, director of Parkhurst NuVision Clinic. "What it means with astigmatism... it's basically one part of the eye is really curved and the other one is not so curved."
Just over a month ago, Parkhurst NuVision and Harris connected and decided Lasik would massively improve his vision and up his game. Was he nervous on the field? No way! But what about Lasik?
"A little bit. But the doctors are here to take care of me, so I'm in good hands and God will take good care of everything," Harris said.
Dr. Greg Parkhurst, the founder and CEO of Parkhurst NuVision, added: "We're going to be using the equipment right behind me here. And it's modern technology that uses actually two separate lasers to fix his vision."
After less than 10 minutes of surgery, he was done, and just one day later, he was happy about the results.
"This morning, waking up, and I don't have to wear anything. No contacts. No glasses," he said. "It is just like an unbelievable feeling. It's something I've never done since I was about four or five years old."
Dr. Saenz told us: "I think it's going to be even more impressive to see what he's able to do next year when we're actually able to treat that astigmatism and be able to have that clear vision all the time."
Dr. Parkhurst also said: "I think this is going to take his performance to another level. You know, he can actually see, I think he's going to perform even that much better on the field."
Harris says his teammates say they want Lasik too. He told us, "A couple of my teammates, you know, came up to me telling me how lucky I was to be able to get Lasik and how they want it. So it's just a great thing that I was able to get it, and it just makes everything so much easier."
To find out more about Parkhurst NuVision and LASIK click here: https://sanantonio-lasik.com/