Western Window Systems overcame numerous obstacles (literally) when the company participated in the annual Warrior Dash on Saturday, April 9, at Glendale’s Camelback Ranch. Western not only sponsored a team, but the company’s chief financial officer, Heather Zorge, participated with a team from Phoenix’s Foundation for Blind Children, one of the largest schools for visually impaired people in the nation.

Zorge, who serves on the foundation’s board of trustees, led a team of 10 students ages 12 to 23 years old on the 5K obstacle course, which features rope walls, army crawls through a 100-foot-long mud pit, and 10 other physically demanding hurdles.

“We even taught them to jump over fire,” says Zorge, who trained for six weeks with the students. “It’s amazing. The students operated with the understanding that their blindness is a diagnosis, not a disability. So they’re confident and they powered through everything. Quitting isn’t something they think about.”

The Foundation for Blind Children, the nation’s largest nonprofit agency of its kind, has been serving the blind and visually impaired in the Phoenix area since 1952. Each year, the foundation tackles what CEO Marc Ashton calls a “challenge event.” In the past, the foundation’s students have summited Mount Kilimanjaro, traversed rim to rim at the Grand Canyon, and swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco.

“It’s amazing,” Ashton says. “The pride of these students is incredible, and pride is a great motivator, which is one of the reasons our students have been so successful in our challenge events and in life.”

For more information on the Foundation for Blind Children, visit the company’s website.

View photo gallery: Warrior Dash.