BALL LEAGUE FOR HEARING-IMPAIRED A GRAND SLAM.Byline: Dennis McCarthy Dennis McCarthy may refer to:
She always got the same answer, Sylvia Rodriguez says. No. No, her hearing-impaired hearing-impaired adj. 1. Having a diminished or defective sense of hearing, but not deaf; hard of hearing. 2. Completely incapable of hearing; deaf. n. Persons who are deficient in hearing or are deaf. , 5-year-old son couldn't play in their youth baseball league. It would be too dangerous. He wouldn't be able to hear or communicate with the other kids on the team or the coaches. We just can't take the chance he'll get hurt. You hear the same excuses long enough and you almost start believing them, Sylvia says. Then you look into the disappointed eyes of your son when you tell him in sign language, no - again. You look into those eyes and then you get mad. How can this be, you ask yourself, when there are an estimated 350,000 hard-of-hearing and deaf kids living in the Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. area? ``I couldn't believe I was the only parent of a deaf child going through this, wanting my son to play on a youth baseball team,'' Sylvia Rodriguez says. ``There was nothing wrong with David's arms or legs, his eyes, his mind. It was only his ears that weren't working. That shouldn't be enough to keep a child from playing on a baseball team.'' No, it shouldn't, but it was. Until Sylvia got fed up with taking no for an answer and answered back herself. What happened next is part ``Rocky,'' part ``Norma Rae,'' part ``A League of Their Own'' - a story of one mother who didn't know a baseball from a football, standing up for her deaf son. Sylvia Rodriguez had been right all along. She wasn't the only parent of a deaf child getting no for an answer. There were plenty of others. So she started out with one team of hard-of-hearing and deaf 5- and 6-year-old kids, ready to take on all comers all who come, or offer, to take part in a matter, especially in a contest or controversy. - Bp. Stillingfleet. See also: Comer , and formed her own youth baseball league. In 1993, the Mainstream Sports League A sports league is an organization that exists to provide a regulated competition for a number of people to compete in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and compete on weekends; at its most complex, it can was born. The telephone started to ring a few hours after the first fliers went up around Chase Street School in Panorama City, one of four schools in the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. with a program for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. The mothers and fathers of these kids wanted to know more about her idea. How would the kids communicate with each other on the field? They couldn't just drop their gloves in the middle of a play and use sign language. ``Your ball.'' ``Mine.'' She was working on that, Sylvia told the parents. But if I can make it work, will you let your son or daughter play? The answers came quickly: Yes, yes, yes. ``I went over to CSUN CSUN California State University Northridge and Pierce College In 2006 the Library won a national Excellence award. Academics Pierce College offers associate's degrees, mainly in the arts and sciences. There are also certificate programs in early childhood education, social services, dental hygienist, and others. and talked to the students taking classes in sign language to be interpreters,'' Sylvia says. ``I told them some deaf kids needed their help right now.'' So with a handful of college student interpreters and a few parents and siblings siblings npl (formal) → frères et sœurs mpl (de mêmes parents) standing next to the players, communicating with them in sign language, the two teams in the Mainstream Sports League played their first game in the summer of '93. The opponents were kids the same age who could hear - most of them from the neighborhood around the Panorama Park and Recreation Center, where the games are played. The ragtag rag·tag adj. 1. Shaggy or unkempt; ragged. 2. Diverse and disorderly in appearance or composition: "They're a small ragtag army of racketeers, bandits, and murderers" Dodgers with their interpreters got clobbered, but they hung tough week after week. Who cared about winning and losing? They were finally getting to play, finally part of a team. That was the important thing. ``It was very hard for us that first year because none of us knew anything about baseball,'' Sylvia says. That would quickly change. Word started to get out in the community about this mother who had started a new youth baseball league for deaf kids to play in. Pretty soon, Sylvia began getting telephone calls from people who did know baseball, local coaches like Lou Rivera and Terry Torres, offering to help teach her ragtag team how to play. The San Fernando High School San Fernando High School, located in San Fernando, California, is a secondary school that is a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school colors are black and gold. All girl teams are referred to as Lady Tigers, all boy teams simply as Tigers. varsity baseball team heard about the kids and invited them to come over to their field once a week for some instruction and games. Before long, the ragtag Dodgers began to look and play more like a baseball team. Before long, there were three teams in the league, then six. Now there are nine playing in three age groups this year. The Mainstream Sports League is now reaching out to the other three schools in the Valley with classes for hard-of-hearing and deaf kids. Sylvia's been fielding phone calls from the parents of deaf kids living in Diamond Bar, Riverside, La Puente La Puente (lä pwĕn`tē), city (1990 pop. 36,955), Los Angeles co., S Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles; laid out 1841, inc. 1956. Primarily residential, the city manufactures hardware, electronics, and paper products. and other cities in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, who want to know how to get their kids involved in the Mainstream Sports League. ``There's even talk of taking the league national,'' Sylvia says, still a little stunned stun tr.v. stunned, stun·ning, stuns 1. To daze or render senseless, by or as if by a blow. 2. To overwhelm or daze with a loud noise. 3. by how the league has grown in popularity in only five seasons. ``I'm not surprised,'' she says. ``I just can't believe no one thought of it before.'' Maybe everyone was too busy taking no for an answer. For the record, Thursday night's game between the ragtag Dodgers and the White Sox was cut short by the heat. The kids decided they'd rather have a water fight than play baseball. Anything goes in the Mainstream Sports League. As long as it's fun. CAPTION(S): 4 Photos PHOTO (1 -- color) Kristoper Sandoval, 6, gets sign-language instructions from first-base coach Kim Hellebrandt after reaching base for the first time during a practice game at the Panorama Park and Recreation Center. (2 -- color) Kristoper Sandoval gets some pointers from his mother, Maria, as his Dodgers play the White Sox. (3 -- color) Seven-year-old Alexandra Hellebrandt keeps her eye on the ball as she starts her swing during the T-ball game. Gus Ruelas/Daily News (4 -- color) no caption (signing hands) |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion