Look At This Entry

When people, both deaf and hearing, bemoaned, whined, criticized and questioned the athletic skills between the deaf athletes and the athletes who can hear, they often amuse or astound me with their arguments. They often argued and proved with the records that hearing athletes fared much better than deaf athletes.

I will not deny that they are right. In fact, they are so right. Yes, many hearing athletes are better or a notch above deaf athletes. There. I said it. It is no secret. Heckle at us if you must, McCock.

But did anyone wonder why it happened like that? Did you wonder why they are better than deaf athletes?

There are several factors.

1. Most deaf children came from hearing families who does not give a fuck about what their deaf children are doing. Not all but many are. They did not play with their deaf kids, they did not take him to little league games, they did not talk about it.

2. Many deaf schools used to be very competitive with powerful teams until early 1980s because many deaf children were forced to stay in the dorms, thus was forced to play sports, work out and so on. They often encouraged, pressured then if it failed, forced you to play one sport.

But as state governments started to cut the deaf schools' budget, they had to close the weight room, the funds to send kids to football, basketball, baseball camps during the summertimes -- the athletic skills of deaf persons dropped tremendously b ehind hearing athletes who had the full support and attention of their parents, school and so on.

3. As it is evident that more and more deaf children are shuffled amongst the hearing children at the public schools, most hearing coaches does not want nor have the time to deal with the communication barrier -- the majority of deaf students do not play much. They are simply benchwarmers and "yes coach-men".

Many parents (mostly deaf and few hearing ones) objected to this move, some fought for years, some gave up. Some succeeded, most failed.

The result is that you see the gap between them and us.

Was it our fault? No, McCock.

It was theirs.

Stop cutting our budget, stop ignoring us, stop putting us in the corner -- then we will compete evenly. If not, the gap will grow.

That is what has been happening for more than 40 years.

R-