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http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/sports/colleges/university_of_south_carolina/12480016.htm
Being deaf has never kept USC freshman Felicia Schroeder from pursuing her dreams
By STEVE WISEMAN
Staff Writer
The thought doesn’t stand a chance against Felicia Schroeder’s will.
Blessed with a sharp mind, an engaging personality and athletic skills, no one would blame her if she longed to hear her teammates call her name.
Or chat on the phone with a friend.
Or hear Buddy and Boomer, her beloved dogs, barking at the door.
But Felicia doesn’t allow it. She doesn’t wonder what she could accomplish if she had been born able to hear.
She doesn’t have the time. She is a freshman studying biology at USC, with plans to become a veterinarian. Tonight, she will play in the Gamecocks’ women’s soccer season-opener against Mercer.
“I am very proud of what I have overcome: deafness, three (knee) surgeries and people doubting me throughout my life,” Felicia said. “It's a real good feeling for my family and I.”
Living well despite her disability is the only way she knows to live.
Faulty cochlear nerves caused her to enter a world of silence on Dec. 2, 1986. She has spent the nearly 19 years since then making sure she is heard with her actions, words and deeds.
As a toddler, her parents nervously watched her climb a set of monkey bars in the back yard during a family gathering and sit proudly on top.
Before she entered kindergarten, Felicia joined a youth soccer team, kicking and dribbling the ball better than those twice her age.
In elementary school, realizing the hearing aids offered no aid and only gave some kids a reason to tease, she tossed them aside for good and mastered sign language and lip reading.
All the while, she excelled. She made friends. She lived.
“She’s not embarrassed by the fact that she’s deaf,” said Emily Rein, Felicia’s friend since third grade and a soccer player for Ball State. “She’ll go into any situation like a normal person would, which is great.”
A ‘NORMAL’ LIFE
It’s how Tom and Andrea Schroeder decided things would be for their oldest daughter once they absorbed the shock of her condition.
Tom first noticed that Felicia, then a 1-year-old, might have a hearing problem. The family doctor was skeptical.
“She was such a bright child,” Andrea Schroeder remembers the doctor saying. “There was no way.”
But it was true. No one else in the family or even the extended family was deaf. But surrounded by that close-knit family and some good friends in Cincinnati, the Schroeders received the advice that would pave the future not only for Felicia, but for her younger sister, Leslie, who also was born deaf.
“We have a lot of friends,” Tom Schroeder said. “A lot of them instilled that in us. They’re only deaf and you have to treat them the way they are, like normal kids. We wanted our kids to grow up in the hearing world. You don’t want to believe it. But it’s a hearing world. They are going to have to get along with hearing people.”
Felicia attended public schools rather than Cincinnati’s deaf school. She was moved around to seven schools before the fourth grade as the school district put her where she would get help from interpreters.
That’s when Felicia’s desire to be normal kicked in again.
“She told me she was tired of being at one school, making friends and then moving to a different school,” Andrea Schroeder said.
Felicia’s home district, Oak Hills, became her permanent home. Sports helped her bridge the gap caused by her deafness.
“Even when we were younger she was good with what she did in sports,” Rein said. “People would pick her for teams during recess.”
By the time Felicia reached Oak Hills High as a freshman, she still played soccer but hoped to play basketball in college.
A torn ACL slowed those hopes. A second one a year later killed them. A third knee surgery, for a torn meniscus, dented her ferocious will.
“I really became a little doubtful that I would be able to get this far,” Felicia said.
But she had plenty of will in reserve.
She focused on soccer and set about mastering it. She scored 37 goals in her high school career, third on Oak Hills’ all-time list, and made the all-conference team three times.
“It just seems like no matter what you throw at the girl, she’s able to overcome it,” said Tim Lesiak, who coached Felicia for five years with the Ohio Elite Soccer Academy club team. “Which for me is just amazing considering she can’t hear a thing.”
‘WE NEED THAT GIRL’
It didn’t matter that she couldn’t hear her teammates yelling to her or her coaches screaming instructions. Felicia has learned to control the ball and keep her head up to see the field, where teammates wave their hands for the ball rather than yelling.
Lesiak, who played soccer for the University of Cincinnati and professionally with the Cincinnati Cheetahs, dreams what Felicia will not.
“I can’t imagine not being able to hear in the game,” Lesiak said. “I can’t imagine what she would be capable of if she could hear.”
She gets along fine without hearing, so well that you can’t detect the disability when watching her play.
Just ask USC assistant coach Mat Cosgriff. He watched her play in a club tournament in Raleigh two years ago and began recruiting her via e-mail.
He received a surprise response to an e-mail inviting her for an official visit.
“She asked me if we could get an interpreter,” Cosgriff said. “I said, ‘An interpreter for what?’ She goes, ‘Well, I’m deaf.’• ”
Because Felicia was such a strong player, with aggressiveness and one-on-one goal-scoring abilities the Gamecocks needed, the disability didn’t deter the coaching staff.
“We also learned quickly that she could handle it,” USC coach Shelley Smith said. “It wasn’t like she couldn’t understand us. I didn’t realize how good she was at reading lips and how good she would do without the help. We learned that on the visit. She did fine.”
She did fine on the field as well. While attending a USC soccer camp in July 2004, Felicia’s play caught the eye of Kimmy Criss, her future Gamecock teammate.
“She had someone on her back,” Criss said. “Without anyone telling her, she chested the ball around the girl, took a 40-yard shot and put it in the goal. I was like, ‘We need that girl on our team.’ I probably found out two days later that she was deaf.”
Felicia has interpreters who accompany her to classes at USC and sign the teacher’s words. She does not use an interpreter during soccer practice but the thought has crossed her mind.
Her teammates, meanwhile, are doing all they can to help. Sophomore Jessi Swaim is taking a sign-language class this fall. Others wanted to, but the class was full.
The coaches are careful to look Felicia in the eye when talking to her during practice so she can read their lips. She answers them by speaking words that, while not always enunciated well, are understandable.
“We have one person on our team trying to deal with 25 who she can’t communicate with,” Criss said. “We’re dealing with one person that we have to communicate with in a different way. In that aspect, we can be patient. It’s a whole lot harder for her to come in and get involved with the team and have us accept her.”
In sports, acceptance comes with accomplishment. Felicia helped herself by scoring the winning goal in a 2-1 exhibition against Davidson earlier this month.
One of her dreams had come true, a dream reached no matter the obstacle.
“God made me deaf for a reason,” Schroeder said, “so I have a different gift to give in this world, and I am out there following my heart and dreams and achieving accomplishments any other hearing person can.”
Her gratitude spreads to everyone she meets, even if shenever will hear them express it.
“Whether she knows it or not, we all look up to her,” Criss said. “I know everyone on the team respects her more than anyone else on the team with how much she’s overcome, what a good player she is and how she doesn’t let it frustrate her.”
Being deaf has never kept USC freshman Felicia Schroeder from pursuing her dreams
By STEVE WISEMAN
Staff Writer
The thought doesn’t stand a chance against Felicia Schroeder’s will.
Blessed with a sharp mind, an engaging personality and athletic skills, no one would blame her if she longed to hear her teammates call her name.
Or chat on the phone with a friend.
Or hear Buddy and Boomer, her beloved dogs, barking at the door.
But Felicia doesn’t allow it. She doesn’t wonder what she could accomplish if she had been born able to hear.
She doesn’t have the time. She is a freshman studying biology at USC, with plans to become a veterinarian. Tonight, she will play in the Gamecocks’ women’s soccer season-opener against Mercer.
“I am very proud of what I have overcome: deafness, three (knee) surgeries and people doubting me throughout my life,” Felicia said. “It's a real good feeling for my family and I.”
Living well despite her disability is the only way she knows to live.
Faulty cochlear nerves caused her to enter a world of silence on Dec. 2, 1986. She has spent the nearly 19 years since then making sure she is heard with her actions, words and deeds.
As a toddler, her parents nervously watched her climb a set of monkey bars in the back yard during a family gathering and sit proudly on top.
Before she entered kindergarten, Felicia joined a youth soccer team, kicking and dribbling the ball better than those twice her age.
In elementary school, realizing the hearing aids offered no aid and only gave some kids a reason to tease, she tossed them aside for good and mastered sign language and lip reading.
All the while, she excelled. She made friends. She lived.
“She’s not embarrassed by the fact that she’s deaf,” said Emily Rein, Felicia’s friend since third grade and a soccer player for Ball State. “She’ll go into any situation like a normal person would, which is great.”
A ‘NORMAL’ LIFE
It’s how Tom and Andrea Schroeder decided things would be for their oldest daughter once they absorbed the shock of her condition.
Tom first noticed that Felicia, then a 1-year-old, might have a hearing problem. The family doctor was skeptical.
“She was such a bright child,” Andrea Schroeder remembers the doctor saying. “There was no way.”
But it was true. No one else in the family or even the extended family was deaf. But surrounded by that close-knit family and some good friends in Cincinnati, the Schroeders received the advice that would pave the future not only for Felicia, but for her younger sister, Leslie, who also was born deaf.
“We have a lot of friends,” Tom Schroeder said. “A lot of them instilled that in us. They’re only deaf and you have to treat them the way they are, like normal kids. We wanted our kids to grow up in the hearing world. You don’t want to believe it. But it’s a hearing world. They are going to have to get along with hearing people.”
Felicia attended public schools rather than Cincinnati’s deaf school. She was moved around to seven schools before the fourth grade as the school district put her where she would get help from interpreters.
That’s when Felicia’s desire to be normal kicked in again.
“She told me she was tired of being at one school, making friends and then moving to a different school,” Andrea Schroeder said.
Felicia’s home district, Oak Hills, became her permanent home. Sports helped her bridge the gap caused by her deafness.
“Even when we were younger she was good with what she did in sports,” Rein said. “People would pick her for teams during recess.”
By the time Felicia reached Oak Hills High as a freshman, she still played soccer but hoped to play basketball in college.
A torn ACL slowed those hopes. A second one a year later killed them. A third knee surgery, for a torn meniscus, dented her ferocious will.
“I really became a little doubtful that I would be able to get this far,” Felicia said.
But she had plenty of will in reserve.
She focused on soccer and set about mastering it. She scored 37 goals in her high school career, third on Oak Hills’ all-time list, and made the all-conference team three times.
“It just seems like no matter what you throw at the girl, she’s able to overcome it,” said Tim Lesiak, who coached Felicia for five years with the Ohio Elite Soccer Academy club team. “Which for me is just amazing considering she can’t hear a thing.”
‘WE NEED THAT GIRL’
It didn’t matter that she couldn’t hear her teammates yelling to her or her coaches screaming instructions. Felicia has learned to control the ball and keep her head up to see the field, where teammates wave their hands for the ball rather than yelling.
Lesiak, who played soccer for the University of Cincinnati and professionally with the Cincinnati Cheetahs, dreams what Felicia will not.
“I can’t imagine not being able to hear in the game,” Lesiak said. “I can’t imagine what she would be capable of if she could hear.”
She gets along fine without hearing, so well that you can’t detect the disability when watching her play.
Just ask USC assistant coach Mat Cosgriff. He watched her play in a club tournament in Raleigh two years ago and began recruiting her via e-mail.
He received a surprise response to an e-mail inviting her for an official visit.
“She asked me if we could get an interpreter,” Cosgriff said. “I said, ‘An interpreter for what?’ She goes, ‘Well, I’m deaf.’• ”
Because Felicia was such a strong player, with aggressiveness and one-on-one goal-scoring abilities the Gamecocks needed, the disability didn’t deter the coaching staff.
“We also learned quickly that she could handle it,” USC coach Shelley Smith said. “It wasn’t like she couldn’t understand us. I didn’t realize how good she was at reading lips and how good she would do without the help. We learned that on the visit. She did fine.”
She did fine on the field as well. While attending a USC soccer camp in July 2004, Felicia’s play caught the eye of Kimmy Criss, her future Gamecock teammate.
“She had someone on her back,” Criss said. “Without anyone telling her, she chested the ball around the girl, took a 40-yard shot and put it in the goal. I was like, ‘We need that girl on our team.’ I probably found out two days later that she was deaf.”
Felicia has interpreters who accompany her to classes at USC and sign the teacher’s words. She does not use an interpreter during soccer practice but the thought has crossed her mind.
Her teammates, meanwhile, are doing all they can to help. Sophomore Jessi Swaim is taking a sign-language class this fall. Others wanted to, but the class was full.
The coaches are careful to look Felicia in the eye when talking to her during practice so she can read their lips. She answers them by speaking words that, while not always enunciated well, are understandable.
“We have one person on our team trying to deal with 25 who she can’t communicate with,” Criss said. “We’re dealing with one person that we have to communicate with in a different way. In that aspect, we can be patient. It’s a whole lot harder for her to come in and get involved with the team and have us accept her.”
In sports, acceptance comes with accomplishment. Felicia helped herself by scoring the winning goal in a 2-1 exhibition against Davidson earlier this month.
One of her dreams had come true, a dream reached no matter the obstacle.
“God made me deaf for a reason,” Schroeder said, “so I have a different gift to give in this world, and I am out there following my heart and dreams and achieving accomplishments any other hearing person can.”
Her gratitude spreads to everyone she meets, even if shenever will hear them express it.
“Whether she knows it or not, we all look up to her,” Criss said. “I know everyone on the team respects her more than anyone else on the team with how much she’s overcome, what a good player she is and how she doesn’t let it frustrate her.”