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Takoma Park woman chosen for World Deaf Volleyball Championships
Serve. Set. Spike. For Ludmila Mounty-Weinstock, the language of volleyball is universal, even for the deaf.
The Takoma Park resident and 21-year-old junior at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., was chosen along with 14 others — seven are current Gallaudet students — to make up the USA Deaf Volleyball Team, a group that uses American Sign Language to call plays and communicate with the coach and teammates.
That team, including Mounty-Weinstock, will participate in the World Deaf Volleyball Championships next summer in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and 12 of them will go on to play in the Summer Deaflympics in September 2009 in Taipei, Taiwan.
At her home in Takoma Park Friday, Mounty-Weinstock signed excitedly that she was taken aback when she heard the news, bringing her hands to her face in a surprised gesture.
‘‘I thought, ‘Oh! This is great,’” she signed, according to a translation by her 12-year-old sister, Hannah. She may have been the only one who was surprised.
‘‘I was thrilled about it ... but not surprised,” her father Robert Weinstock said. Weinstock and his wife, Judith Mounty, are both deaf and work at Gallaudet, which specializes in ‘‘liberal education and career development for deaf and hard-of-hearing undergraduate students,” according to its Web site.
‘‘I wasn’t shocked at all. She’s just that good,” Hannah added.
Mounty-Weinstock, who often goes by her nickname ‘‘Luda,” can look out of place around her family, towering over them with her more than 6-foot-tall frame. Born in Russia, she lived in an orphanage without hearing aids to assist in learning the Russian spoken language or Russian Sign Language tutoring until she was adopted by the Gallaudet couple at age 7.
The family’s first stop on U.S. soil was dinner at a Chinese restaurant, the ‘‘most American meal they could find,” joked Hannah, who for the last two summers has attended Kids of Deaf Adults camps in New York, where children of deaf parents from across the country get together to discuss their families and stories of growing up hearing in a deaf household. Hannah is the only ‘‘hearing” member of the family.
‘‘It was a big change. ... She went from nothing to everything,” Hannah said, her hands moving quickly to translate for her big sister. Mounty-Weinstock’s father said picking up American Sign Language was easy; it was English she struggled with.
‘‘It has been a challenge, but I have been patient and never give up working on my English throughout my whole life,” Mounty-Weinstock wrote in an e-mail.
Her first language was ‘‘home signs,” she wrote, where she made up signs of her own and used them with friends and caregivers in the Russian orphanage.
‘‘My parents tell me that I was very skilled with my own ‘signed language,’” she wrote.
Mounty-Weinstock picked up volleyball while at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf, a high school staffed by Gallaudet employees in Washington, D.C. When she discovered she ‘‘was not so bad” at the sport, she signed, she stuck with it and it paid off, her father said.
‘‘The game is played exactly the same whether deaf or hearing,” she wrote. One challenge for deaf players, she added, was keeping up with coaches’ signals.
‘‘Deaf players have to watch what they [are] doing,” she wrote, making it harder for a coach to guide players in a game using sign language. The signals players use with each other are standard, volleyball-specific American Sign Language signals, she wrote.
Gallaudet volleyball head coach Lynn Ray Boren wrote in an e-mail that he had a ‘‘more personal reaction” to the news that Mounty-Weinstock was selected to the national team, because he has known her since she was an elementary school student. ‘‘Her passion in volleyball and [her]size” will contribute greatly to the team, wrote Boren, who was also her high school volleyball coach and will head the United States team at the Deaflympics in Taiwan in 2009.
A physical education major, Mounty-Weinstock hopes to teach in that field when she graduates. For now, she wrote that she looks forward to playing on the world scene and working on her game, including impromptu pickup matches during the summertime against Gallaudet staff and alumni, weight training and hours of practices during the regular season.
‘‘I will be focusing on improving my skills as a volleyball player and am very excited about being able to continue to play for several years,” she wrote.
Serve. Set. Spike. For Ludmila Mounty-Weinstock, the language of volleyball is universal, even for the deaf.
The Takoma Park resident and 21-year-old junior at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., was chosen along with 14 others — seven are current Gallaudet students — to make up the USA Deaf Volleyball Team, a group that uses American Sign Language to call plays and communicate with the coach and teammates.
That team, including Mounty-Weinstock, will participate in the World Deaf Volleyball Championships next summer in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and 12 of them will go on to play in the Summer Deaflympics in September 2009 in Taipei, Taiwan.
At her home in Takoma Park Friday, Mounty-Weinstock signed excitedly that she was taken aback when she heard the news, bringing her hands to her face in a surprised gesture.
‘‘I thought, ‘Oh! This is great,’” she signed, according to a translation by her 12-year-old sister, Hannah. She may have been the only one who was surprised.
‘‘I was thrilled about it ... but not surprised,” her father Robert Weinstock said. Weinstock and his wife, Judith Mounty, are both deaf and work at Gallaudet, which specializes in ‘‘liberal education and career development for deaf and hard-of-hearing undergraduate students,” according to its Web site.
‘‘I wasn’t shocked at all. She’s just that good,” Hannah added.
Mounty-Weinstock, who often goes by her nickname ‘‘Luda,” can look out of place around her family, towering over them with her more than 6-foot-tall frame. Born in Russia, she lived in an orphanage without hearing aids to assist in learning the Russian spoken language or Russian Sign Language tutoring until she was adopted by the Gallaudet couple at age 7.
The family’s first stop on U.S. soil was dinner at a Chinese restaurant, the ‘‘most American meal they could find,” joked Hannah, who for the last two summers has attended Kids of Deaf Adults camps in New York, where children of deaf parents from across the country get together to discuss their families and stories of growing up hearing in a deaf household. Hannah is the only ‘‘hearing” member of the family.
‘‘It was a big change. ... She went from nothing to everything,” Hannah said, her hands moving quickly to translate for her big sister. Mounty-Weinstock’s father said picking up American Sign Language was easy; it was English she struggled with.
‘‘It has been a challenge, but I have been patient and never give up working on my English throughout my whole life,” Mounty-Weinstock wrote in an e-mail.
Her first language was ‘‘home signs,” she wrote, where she made up signs of her own and used them with friends and caregivers in the Russian orphanage.
‘‘My parents tell me that I was very skilled with my own ‘signed language,’” she wrote.
Mounty-Weinstock picked up volleyball while at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf, a high school staffed by Gallaudet employees in Washington, D.C. When she discovered she ‘‘was not so bad” at the sport, she signed, she stuck with it and it paid off, her father said.
‘‘The game is played exactly the same whether deaf or hearing,” she wrote. One challenge for deaf players, she added, was keeping up with coaches’ signals.
‘‘Deaf players have to watch what they [are] doing,” she wrote, making it harder for a coach to guide players in a game using sign language. The signals players use with each other are standard, volleyball-specific American Sign Language signals, she wrote.
Gallaudet volleyball head coach Lynn Ray Boren wrote in an e-mail that he had a ‘‘more personal reaction” to the news that Mounty-Weinstock was selected to the national team, because he has known her since she was an elementary school student. ‘‘Her passion in volleyball and [her]size” will contribute greatly to the team, wrote Boren, who was also her high school volleyball coach and will head the United States team at the Deaflympics in Taiwan in 2009.
A physical education major, Mounty-Weinstock hopes to teach in that field when she graduates. For now, she wrote that she looks forward to playing on the world scene and working on her game, including impromptu pickup matches during the summertime against Gallaudet staff and alumni, weight training and hours of practices during the regular season.
‘‘I will be focusing on improving my skills as a volleyball player and am very excited about being able to continue to play for several years,” she wrote.