John Herzog stands in the corner of the Hinsdale South gymnasium seeking solitude just before his third-place match in a junior varsity wrestling tournament.
The Downers Grove South High School junior has no idea if his opponent is tall or short, stocky or lean. That usually doesn’t bother him. But on this day Herzog has a lot at stake.
His mother, Teri, sits in the bleachers fighting her nerves.
“By now everybody has seen each other wrestle,” she says. “They have checked each other out.”
Except for her son, who sees nothing.
His coach reminds Herzog that it’s just another match, but Herzog knows better.
“I’ve never medaled before,” Herzog reminds him.
When Herzog begins wrestling Morton’s Mike Howard, it seems every spectator in the gym is pulling for him.
“I’d hate to be the Morton guy,” says a wrestler from Oak Park. “The whole crowd is cheering against him.”
Herzog manages a 4-0 victory and the crowd erupts with applause. They marvel at his ability because he compensates for a disability.
Herzog is blind.
He was one of two blind wrestlers competing in the Chicago area this season. There are many more athletes who compete with little or no hearing.
The approximately 55 deaf and hard-of-hearing athletes are spread among freshman, sophomore, junior varsity and varsity levels in mainstream sports. Most deaf students attend schools with comprehensive programs for the deaf and hard of hearing. Hersey in Arlington Heights, Hinsdale South in Darien, Streamwood and Tinley Park have such programs, as do Chicago Vocational and Young in the Chicago Public League.
As with most athletes the degree of success among blind or deaf competitors varies, more because of skill level than their disability. Their impairments, and adaptations for them, are a way of life that is neither tragic nor heroic, many of these student-athletes say.
“It’s a different perception of life,” says Herzog’s father, John.
Deaf and blind athletes experience sports differently, with rule changes and other modifications that range from slight to significant, and they often defy stereotypes and expectations in their performances.
“The only difference is language,” says Susan Wildman, whose daughter, Gracie, is deaf and has played tennis at Hersey. “They’ve had to fight the stigma that they’re dumb and mute. Really, they’re bilingual.”
While schools do not keep comparative statistics, those who monitor programs for the deaf and blind agree that the number of participants in mainstream sports has increased in the last two decades.
“[People] didn’t know the deaf and blind can compete,” says Debra Quain, the deaf and hard of hearing coordinator at the Southwest Cook County Cooperative Association for Special Education. “Mainstream is more willing to take them now. They know it’s not going to be a struggle [for deaf athletes] because of interpreters.”
Wrestling is the rare sport that has rule modifications for the blind. For that reason it is perhaps the only sport blind athletes can compete in at a competitive level against sighted opponents.
“There aren’t a lot of reasonable accommodations that can be made for blind athletes,” says Mary Struckhoff, assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Associations.
Modifications for athletes who are deaf or hard of hearing range from allowing interpreters on sidelines to use of a flashing light that accompanies a sound start for swimmers.
“There’s nothing about being deaf that prevents people from playing sports,” says Meredith Schainblatt, who heads the deaf and hard of hearing program at Hinsdale South. “But the amount of concentration and focus to be a high-level athlete on a varsity team is significant.”
Staying focused
Stan Lockett, a junior at Chicago Vocational, is a goalkeeper on the school’s soccer team and a volleyball player. Although he cannot hear or speak, he has no trouble playing volleyball. He uses hand signals to call for the ball and adjusts easily to the referee’s gestures. It helps that the referee is positioned in one place, next to the net, throughout the match.
Soccer is another story. The field is 120 yards long, with 22 players and officials racing all over it. But Lockett, one of CVS’ top players, has become adept at making adjustments. When he’s not watching the ball, he’s looking at the referees’ signals. His eyes stray from the field only to glance at the interpreter standing on the sidelines who may relay instructions from the coach.
His biggest challenge, which can be aggravating, is communicating with teammates during a game.
“I try to teach them to stay in their positions, but they can’t understand my voice,” Lockett says, using sign language interpreted by Brenda Stringfellow. “It happens all the time, in every game. I get so frustrated I almost quit, but I can’t. I love soccer.”
And he has the skills for it, which overshadows communication gaps. At practice he teaches teammates sign language to bolster communication, an example of his leadership that makes him as popular with his peers as his coaches.
“Coaches fight over him,” says Frankye Parham of CVS’ deaf and hard of hearing program. “He’s very athletic and motivated.”
Lockett wants to be a role model for classmates he believes live an isolated life. He says many of his deaf classmates have little or no communication with their family members.
“Oftentimes, when parents and family members don’t know sign language, the students connect to anyone who does,” says Maureen Murphy, an interpreter at Hersey.
The bond between deaf students and their interpreters is often strong. Illinois law requires schools to have interpreters accompany deaf students in the classroom and in all school-sponsored activities.
David Witulski, an interpreter at Tinley Park High School, paces the sidelines with basketball coach Mick Swanson to translate the coach’s instructions to Brian Lucas, a deaf senior reserve on the varsity squad.
“Is it more difficult?” Swanson says of the communication process. “Sure. It takes three people, but it also takes understanding on both sides.”
Swanson and Lucas also rely on notes and chalkboards to speak to each other.
Lucas is dependent on Witulski to interpret not only the coach’s words but also his emotions and inflections.
On the court, though, Lucas is on his own in communicating with teammates. The sign language Lucas has taught some of them and their homemade gestures bolster their rapport. This also worked for Lucas and three other deaf football players last fall.
But Lucas believes communication on the football field is aided by breaks in play. In fact, the huddle was first used in 1894 by Gallaudet University, a college for the deaf in Washington, D.C.
Keith Longino, a football teammate of Lucas’ who also is deaf, played wide receiver for two years with quarterback Adam Huhn, a hearing athlete. In practice Huhn asked interpreters to stop signing so he could learn to communicate with sign language. In huddles Longino would read Huhn’s lips, or Huhn would sign the play or point to it written on his armband.
“If something goes wrong in practice, we stop and make our correction,” Tinley Park coach Bill Rush says. “It’s very time-consuming for the interpreter. For coaches and players, it takes no longer than it would for anyone else.”
Basketball, with its constant action, is much tougher, Lucas says. A cochlear implant he has had since he was 7 does not provide him enough clarity to hear, and he rarely uses it. He is dependent on sign language, and to some degree so are his teammates.
“We make up signs–it’s almost mandatory for us to learn them,” teammate Lionel Buckley says. “It’s a great experience. It’s like a second language.”
To make up for his hearing loss, Lucas’ inquisitive eyes flash back and forth constantly as he surveys his surroundings.
“Deaf people rely on eyes all the time–and touch,” Lucas says through interpreter Mark Bush. “Some opposing players complain we touch too much. It’s a soft touch. I always use my eyes, but I have to feel.”
Lucas was 21 months old when he lost his hearing after an illness. But he never lost his ambition to succeed in sports. He sees athletic competition as a proving ground. In addition to basketball and football, he is a long jumper in track, and he holds a black belt in karate.
“When I have the opportunities, I like to prove deaf people can do anything,” he says. “A good way to do it is through sports.”
The learning curve
To learn new moves in practice, blind wrestlers such as Herzog of Downers South and Richie Schultz of Shepard High School in Palos Heights rely on one-on-one instruction from coaches and teammates. Drills are modified only slightly, if at all, for them.
In a practice last month, teammate Jim Loehman tried to teach Herzog a throwing maneuver by practicing it against him.
“You’d have to see it,” a flustered Loehman tells Herzog at one point, forgetting that Herzog can’t see.
“Some people say that when they’re struggling to put it into words,” Herzog says. “I did eventually get it. The complicated moves take more time.”
And patience.
People who are blind “just need to figure out a way to do it,” Herzog says.
Herzog and Schultz often have a captivated and inspired audience when they wrestle. Schultz, a 130-pounder, went 14-16 for Shepard’s varsity team and qualified for the state sectional tournament, while Herzog went 14-10 at 189 pounds for Downers South’s JV.
Schultz finished third in a state regional meet earlier this month –his first podium finish at the varsity level–to advance to the sectional tournament. When he pinned his final opponent at 130 pounds in the first period, the crowd roared. Even the referees joined in the applause. In the past officials have shed tears when watching him wrestle.
“They cheer for me because all their life they thought of a blind person as being incapable of doing something a sighted person can do,” Schultz says. “They think it’s amazing.”
Seeking equal treatment
Schultz speaks with a trace of anger and resentment for the pity he believes people feel for him because he is blind. He grew weary this season of prolonged ovations, of being the crowd’s sentimental favorite.
“That’s the most annoying thing–special treatment,” he says. “Last year a parent yelled at coach [Bryan] Barham because Barham yelled at me. Why shouldn’t he yell at me? He yells at everyone else. I need discipline too.”
If someone compliments Schultz after a match in which he believes he wrestled poorly, it serves as a reminder that people expect less from him because he is blind.
Deaf teens face the same challenge, although some are not aware of it, says Joanna Toppett, who heads the deaf and hard of hearing program at Tinley Park.
“They can’t overhear conversations,” Toppett says. “They don’t realize the expectation is different. If deaf kids knew what was said at every moment, they’d know society has lower expectations of them.”
Schultz, a team captain, doesn’t get special treatment from his teammates and coaches, but he has their respect.
“Sometimes I try wrestling with my eyes closed,” co-captain Tavares Williams says. “I tried to put myself in his shoes. I got turned over on my back.
“I don’t think he needs sight to do anything. It’s nothing that isolates him from the team.”
The National Federation of State High School Associations, the nation’s governing body for interscholastic sports, can modify rules for disabled athletes, although the modifications must be reasonable for all participants in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, says Struckhoff of the NFHS. Modifications are handled on a case-by-case basis.
About 40 years ago, long before the ADA became law, the federation adopted a rule that calls for wrestlers to remain in constant contact with a blind opponent. A blind wrestler starts his match with his hands out, with one palm up and one down to touch fingers with his opponent, as opposed to a typical start where the wrestlers stand about a yard from each other.
Although Schultz can overpower opponents by quickly grabbing their wrists at the start of the match, he often finds himself trailing 2-0 from the beginning because his opponent’s first move almost always surprises him. Nor can he see when his opponent is scrambling to move out of bounds to avoid giving up points.
But Schultz is accustomed to making adjustments. He attends mainstream classes but relies on Braille translations for reading and writing. He has no light perception, but he can describe in great detail the warmth he feels from a bright light.
He’ll never see a wrestling match, but he knows exactly what to do in one.
“In life you don’t get what-ifs,” he says. “I accept what God gives me. He hasn’t given me the ability to see.
“But yet he’s given me heart.”
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ON TV Watch the WGN-TV “News at Nine” Tuesday night and delve into the world of deaf basketball player Brian Lucas and blind wrestler Richie Schultz as they share their personal experiences with WGN’s Dan Roan.
