Two years ago, someone from the USA Deaf Volleyball organization reached out to me.
At Cal, I played on the club volleyball team. My senior year, I won Cal Sport Clubs Athlete of the Year. The USA Deaf Volleyball organization had seen clips of me playing, and they had heard that I might be hard of hearing.
I’m happy to be called deaf with a lowercase d. Lowercase-d deaf means I didn’t grow up with American Sign Language (ASL) as my first language. I grew up in a hearing culture. Capital-D Deaf people grew up surrounded by other Deaf people in Deaf culture, using ASL as their primary mode of communication—that’s really where the difference lies.
They asked if I would be interested in trying out for the USA Deaf Volleyball team and if I could send my latest hearing test. They were immediately like, “Oh yeah, you definitely qualify. You’re plenty deaf.” That was one time I felt really great to not be able to hear.
I always try to make people feel less scared to talk about hearing loss. No one wants to say anything wrong, so I try to lighten the mood a bit. I was the undergraduate commencement speaker at the College of Environmental Design in 2019. In my commencement speech, I made quite a few jokes about my hearing loss.
I went to try out in North Carolina. I joined the team, and shortly afterward, they asked me to be captain. We played in a couple of tournaments together, and last year we played our first international tournament in Okinawa, Japan. This year, we also got ready for the Tokyo Deaflympics in November. We live all around the country and don’t have a ton of funding to get together often, so we all just played in our own cities in the lead-up to Tokyo.
Playing on a deaf team versus a hearing team isn’t that different. Before every play, the setter will call out plays using hand signals. That’s sign language.
In the deaf game, when you’re on the court, you can’t be wearing hearing aids. You can’t be wearing cochlear implants. You’re not supposed to be speaking; you have to learn how to sign. That’s kind of the only rule of deaf volleyball: Everyone has to be deaf.
The deaf and hard-of-hearing community ranges from those who are proudly capital-D Deaf, use ASL as their native language, may or may not use hearing aids or cochlear implants, and live a life of “Deaf Gain” rather than attempting to fix their hearing or speech to fit a “norm,” to those who grew up dependent on hearing devices, only use spoken English, and have never really given a thought to learning sign language. This full range of deaf identities is represented on the USA Deaf Volleyball team. And so, early on, there were very clearly distinct groups, and the process of bringing the whole team together, using one method of communication, and really identifying as a deaf team has been tough at times—but also really rewarding.
I have not had the typical experience. In an incredible coincidence, my mom is an audiologist. She works with deaf and hard-of-hearing children. She knew sign language and both signed and talked to me before she even knew I had a hearing loss. I’ve had hearing aids since I was 2. I was able to get into some of the best speech classes growing up, and she also had a good understanding of Deaf culture. Then, at Cal, I took American Sign Language with Sherry Hicks, one of the best ASL teachers, to get a little better at signing.
So I grew up getting to see both worlds. I think that’s part of why they asked me to be the team captain. I could communicate well with the people who know English and already knew a decent amount of sign language, and I could communicate with the people who only signed.
We’re all just out there to play volleyball. It’s the same sport, the same competitiveness, the same level. It’s a volleyball team. We’re all just deaf.
