By Curry Kirkpatrick - World of
Sports
Jamel Bradley |
COLUMBIA, S.C. - "My name is Jamel Bradley and I am deaf," says
Jamel Bradley into the camera. Only he doesn't say it, he signs
it - signifying with his hands what he would normally describe
with his voice, so that all the hearing-impaired folks watching
SportsCenter will understand.
It's not as if South Carolina's senior shooting guard cannot
hear anything. In fact, since he arrived in Columbia out of Beckley,
W.Va., and was fitted for a pair of state-of-the-art, omnidirectional
hearing aids, he can communicate on and off the court nearly as
well as anybody with 100-percent hearing. "I really never think
of myself as different," says Bradley, the Gamecocks' leading
scorer with 14.6 ppg. "Even though people like to separate the
two groups of the hearing and the deaf, I've always felt I could
be as normal as anybody in this world."
It's his outside shot that's way above average. Bradley is a
hellacious three-point bomber, who last week broke the South Carolina
career record for trifectas -- draining five (for a total of 219)
and scoring a game-high 22 points in the Gamecocks' huge 80-67
upset win over Georgia.
It was over a 20-minute period before the game, however, that
Bradley especially distinguished himself - meeting and signing
his willowy arms off with a large group of starry-eyed kids who
visibly were bursting with both happiness and pride that one of
their hearing-disabled own had not only become a sports celebrity
but would give so much of his time to them.
"When I was growing up, I really never had a role model," Bradley
says. "That person to come up and say: 'I have been through this,
this is how you work it out, this is what you have to do.' With
the kids I always focus on them keeping their hearing aids in,
wearing them all the time, because I know how hard it is to do
that."
Bradley was barely 18 months old when he contracted a fever that
reached 106 degrees for three days and nearly cost him his life.
It did cost him his hearing until his parents, Robert and Shirley,
purchased his first hearing aids. Then came the real hardship
-- peer pressure.
"I was angry and upset because everybody would laugh and stare
at me, saying some remarks about my hearing aids. It really made
me cry and I didn't want to go to school. It made me feel like
I didn't belong," Bradley says. The youngster would constantly
throw the instruments away, causing his mother to look everywhere
from the family washing machine to the yard outside at all hours
of the day and night.
Through an older brother, however, Jamel discovered basketball
- "a way of being involved with friends, to talk and keep people
from looking at me and saying 'what are those things behind your
ears?' " he laughs.
Jamel Bradley in action. |
Former South Carolina coach Eddie Fogler was more interested
in the things Bradley did behind the rainbow arc; the coach worked
tirelessly to get a set of new, digital hearing aids approved
by the NCAA - instruments that Bradley could program to whatever
situation he found himself in, whether a loud coliseum or a silent
conversation with children.
The day the freshman Bradley emerged on campus with his "new
ears," he experienced a whole new world of different sounds, the
first one very odd. "Jamel was trying to figure out what it was,"
says Karen Pettus, USC's director of disability services. "And
then somebody realized it was the birds chirping in the trees."
"I thought I was going crazy, just insane," Bradley says. "Then
something in my room started making some noise and I was like:
'What is that?' It was just killing me so I went through my whole
dorm room searching and searching and finally I figured out it
was my clock ticking." On the court the difference was equally
striking.
"Huge," Bradley says. "The crowds got louder and louder, but
my hearing aids pushed the noise off to the sides so I could understand
what was going on. I heard my coaches and teammates, I didn't
have to rely on signals or lip reading much anymore."
The fierce way the spindly 6'2" Bradley competes, however, bouncing
off bodies like a ping-pong ball, the hearing aids sometimes go
bouncing themselves. Then there's the problem of batteries. Bradley:
"Some days my battery will go dead and I'll be out there like
'what's going on?' and my teammates will just laugh and say 'Dude,
throw them to the sidelines!' "
"Once Jamel yanked them out and threw them," says mom Shirley,
"and I said 'Oh, no! That's $5,000 you are throwing across the
court. Be a little more concerned!' "
Having finally learned to play without sign language, last summer
Bradley found himself having to sign all over again. That's when
he led the U.S. Deaflympics team -- that's the correct spelling
by the way, to differentiate the deaf games from that other graft-
and commercial-besmirched operation - to the gold medal in Rome,
Italy, scoring 33 points in the championship game. "We brought
up Jamel not to depend on signing all the time," says Shirley.
"But in Rome he absolutely had to sign. It was strange for him
because there was absolutely no speaking. If you did speak, there
would be a penalty or disqualification."
Upon returning for his final season in Gamecock land, however,
Bradley could not shake his newly gained habit. "I guess I forgot
I had a voice again," he laughs. "I kept right on signing and
my teammates were like: 'What are you doing? What is up with your
hands?' I was like: 'Yeah, okay, whatever.' Hey, I was just showcasing
my many skills. Sign language is just the prettiest language in
the world because you get to see people's hands moving real fast
and also see their facial expressions ... if they are sad, happy,
things like that."
Jamel Bradley in action. |
South Carolina coach Dave Odom, the man who replaced Fogler this
season -the Gamecocks are 13-8 (3-5 in the SEC) after losing at
Kentucky on Saturday, with a home game against Florida Tuesday
night -- says the only hesitancy he experiences with Bradley is
when he has to move him over to point guard when senior Aaron
Lucas is out of the game. "If [Jamel] is running and his back
is to me, I wonder if he can hear me. So I am reluctant to put
him at the point where he might be at a disadvantage," says Odom.
On the other hand, as the focal point of the deaf children who
show up all over the SEC to meet him -- he annually entertains
kids in Lexington, Ky., Knoxville, Tenn., and other enemy enclaves
-- Bradley is at a supreme advantage.
"When I get my chance, I'm there 24-7 for these kids," he says.
"I go out immediately to talk to them because I know they are
pretty much saying if I can accomplish these things, keeping my
hearing aids in, they can do the same. I tell them my life story
and how I overcame the problems. It makes my heart happy to contribute
something and make them feel better."
"Jamel is very much a hero in this [hearing-impaired] community,"
says Pettus. "So often these kids are told you can't play basketball
because you are deaf or you can't do this or that because you
are deaf. And Jamel basically says to them: No, that's not right.
I did it and you can, too."
The other day ESPN producer Andy Tennant was finishing up a video
shoot with Bradley in which Jamel had one chance to nail a three
for the camera before he had to get ready for a game. "Pressure's
on. Swish it and get out of here," I joked.
The kid looked at the camera, smiled and signed "I love to shoot
the three." Then he calmly turned around, fired and hit nothing
but nylon. Before he left Bradley signed one more time: "Nice
talking to you," his hands described. "See you later."
Note: Article extracted
from USA
Deaf Sports Federation web site and
was published by World of Sports.
