Miss-Delectable
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Why it's the end of deaf sport as we know it - Opinion - News - Belfast Telegraph
These young folk tell me that they can hear music and other sounds
The Ulster Deaf Sport's Council (UDSC) is holding its general meeting at 7.30pm on Friday, October 12, in the Kinghan Church Hall on Botanic Avenue, Belfast, and I've just got an email from Larry Coogan in Dublin to say he is back in harness and hopes to attend.
Larry has returned as President of the Irish Deaf Sports Association after a long hiatus and contacted me after reading my report in this paper on the deaf bowlers' trip to Wales. Like many other officials and competitors, both north and south, Larry applauds the move to all-Ireland teams in deaf sport and says this is the only way we can hope to win medals in next year's Deaflympics in China.
Things have changed in a big way during the past decade and Larry was frank with me about the problems we need to face. We first got to know him and his wife Anne when Evelyn was a teacher at Jordanstown and travelled to Dublin with the PE teacher and a party of deaf pupils for the annual sports day organised by the IDSA, which regularly attracted big crowds, both young and old.
In those days Larry was also involved in European organisations and during a visit to his lovely home near Balbriggan, I remember him showing me a list he had made of the qualifying times for all major deaf sports events and comparative times and distances achieved by local athletes. The Dublin meetings enabled him and his team to recognise emerging talent and, with financial help from the Government, equip and train the budding sportsmen and women for international competition.
Those were the days when the deaf schools in both Dublin and Belfast boasted attendances of 200 or more, and both football and hockey as well as individual sports were a regular part of the curriculum. The gradual spread of hearing impaired units to outlying towns caused a rapid reduction in attendance at the big deaf schools and team games and sports days slipped into decline. This change in the way deaf children were being educated was not confined to Ireland and has led to a major adjustment in the testing procedure for hearing loss. Fewer and fewer deaf athletes measured up to the old qualifying limit of 85 decibels so the organising body for deaf world sport were forced to gradually lower it to 65 and, as Larry told me in his email, it's now down to 55 decibels in the better ear. Indeed, it's sometimes hard to determine if this new crop of deaf athletes are different from their hearing peers.
Deaf children educated at the special hearing impaired units of mainstream schools have access to all the modern technology of digital hearing aids and cochlear implants and sign language is seldom or never used in the classrooms. They sometimes come into contact with the signing deaf when they leave school and enrol for college courses where interpreters are used to help with communication. These young folk tell me that they can hear music and other sounds - but when the hearing aid or implant is removed they return to the world of the deaf.
It sounds complicated and technical, but Larry tells me we just have to accept that the goalposts have shifted and we either adapt or perish. It may mean the end of deaf sport as we used to know it, with everybody signing and gesturing, but on the other hand we now have the input of a new generation of deaf youth whose skills have been raised by their ability to mix with the hearing world and compete with athletes of real quality.
As I write this, news has just come through that the Irish men's team has won a silver medal at the international deaf bowling competition in Wales. Congratulations!
These young folk tell me that they can hear music and other sounds
The Ulster Deaf Sport's Council (UDSC) is holding its general meeting at 7.30pm on Friday, October 12, in the Kinghan Church Hall on Botanic Avenue, Belfast, and I've just got an email from Larry Coogan in Dublin to say he is back in harness and hopes to attend.
Larry has returned as President of the Irish Deaf Sports Association after a long hiatus and contacted me after reading my report in this paper on the deaf bowlers' trip to Wales. Like many other officials and competitors, both north and south, Larry applauds the move to all-Ireland teams in deaf sport and says this is the only way we can hope to win medals in next year's Deaflympics in China.
Things have changed in a big way during the past decade and Larry was frank with me about the problems we need to face. We first got to know him and his wife Anne when Evelyn was a teacher at Jordanstown and travelled to Dublin with the PE teacher and a party of deaf pupils for the annual sports day organised by the IDSA, which regularly attracted big crowds, both young and old.
In those days Larry was also involved in European organisations and during a visit to his lovely home near Balbriggan, I remember him showing me a list he had made of the qualifying times for all major deaf sports events and comparative times and distances achieved by local athletes. The Dublin meetings enabled him and his team to recognise emerging talent and, with financial help from the Government, equip and train the budding sportsmen and women for international competition.
Those were the days when the deaf schools in both Dublin and Belfast boasted attendances of 200 or more, and both football and hockey as well as individual sports were a regular part of the curriculum. The gradual spread of hearing impaired units to outlying towns caused a rapid reduction in attendance at the big deaf schools and team games and sports days slipped into decline. This change in the way deaf children were being educated was not confined to Ireland and has led to a major adjustment in the testing procedure for hearing loss. Fewer and fewer deaf athletes measured up to the old qualifying limit of 85 decibels so the organising body for deaf world sport were forced to gradually lower it to 65 and, as Larry told me in his email, it's now down to 55 decibels in the better ear. Indeed, it's sometimes hard to determine if this new crop of deaf athletes are different from their hearing peers.
Deaf children educated at the special hearing impaired units of mainstream schools have access to all the modern technology of digital hearing aids and cochlear implants and sign language is seldom or never used in the classrooms. They sometimes come into contact with the signing deaf when they leave school and enrol for college courses where interpreters are used to help with communication. These young folk tell me that they can hear music and other sounds - but when the hearing aid or implant is removed they return to the world of the deaf.
It sounds complicated and technical, but Larry tells me we just have to accept that the goalposts have shifted and we either adapt or perish. It may mean the end of deaf sport as we used to know it, with everybody signing and gesturing, but on the other hand we now have the input of a new generation of deaf youth whose skills have been raised by their ability to mix with the hearing world and compete with athletes of real quality.
As I write this, news has just come through that the Irish men's team has won a silver medal at the international deaf bowling competition in Wales. Congratulations!