Irish Deaf Sports Association

Cast Study - Cathy McCormack

I was born hard of hearing with a genetic progressive type of hearing loss resulting in becoming profoundly deaf at the age of eighteen. My family are Hearing and I attended mainstream schools. The language used at home and at school was spoken English and I accessed this, with varying degrees of success, through bilateral hearing aids and lipreading. I was fortunate to have supportive parents who valued education and instilled in me the belief that I had the potential to achieve my dreams, whatever they might be.

My education was good allowing me to achieve my dreams of a university education and a professional career. However my social development, as the only deaf person in my family, school and local community, was far from positive and my dreams of achieving full social participation were not realised.

I encountered barriers to inclusion in every social activity that I tried to engage with and as a result, I experienced overwhelming feelings of loneliness and isolation.

The only respite I found was through sport. Sport proved to be the only viable means of some semblance of interaction with my Hearing peers and I was heavily involved with basketball at both school and club level. Communication exchanges in these environments were structured with Hearing athletes in mind and were still fraught with difficulty and full inclusion and participation seemed to remain beyond the realms of possibility.

Around the time I started university, my club basketball coach told me that she had heard about a deaf basketball team and she suggested that I try to find out more about this. She was aware, to some extent at least, the frustration I sometimes felt with Hearing sport, given the barriers to inclusion that still existed despite everyone's best efforts. I began my journey into Deaf sport, a journey that would prove to be one of the single most important and positive turning points in my life.

I was nervous, but I was also extremely excited that first evening I showed up for training with St. Vincent's Deaf Ladies Basketball team in St. Declan's school in Cabra, Dublin. Never having met another deaf person before and having absolutely no knowledge of Irish Sign Language, I had no idea what to expect.

Initially there were communication barriers because of the language differences, but I still knew how to play basketball. Sport is a great leveller, it has the potential to bring people from disparate backgrounds together through a shared interest and this proved to be in my case - sport became my passport into the Deaf Community. Gradually I became more involved, felt more included, learned Irish Sign Language (ISL) and began exploring my Deaf identity; all of which contributed hugely to my personal development as a d/Deaf person. Achieving a league and cup double in the process was definitely a nice bonus!

It is in my opinion that Deaf sport has given me the opportunity to experience full inclusion and participation; something that I found to be impossible to attain through Hearing sport alone. My experience through Deaf sport has increased my confidence, improved my self esteem and afforded me the opportunity to reach my full potential as an athlete.

I have had wonderful experiences and lots of fun over the years with my fellow deaf basketballers and golfers, and also a short time with my fellow deaf footballers (before my body told me that a lady of my vintage would be more suited to concentrating on the golf!). My appearances as an Irish international in basketball at the 1996 European Deaf Games and the 1997 Deaflympics, and in golf at the 2008 and 2010 World Deaf Golf Championships are particularly cherished memories.

I know that none of these opportunities would have been possible without the Irish Deaf Sports Association and the Irish Deaf Golf Union. So, as someone who's quality of life has become immeasurably richer as a result of participation in Deaf sport I support wholeheartedly the Irish Deaf Sports Association's first statement of strategy, particularly it's objective to reach out to deaf athletes in mainstream schools.

As a deaf athlete from a mainstream school background, I have experienced difficulty in integrating in Deaf signing environments due to linguistic and attitudinal barriers. These barriers did not prove to be insurmountable, but I feel that they could, and should be addressed by the IDSA through the establishment of an organisational infrastructure that will support deaf athletes' acquisition of ISL while supporting the development of an ethos within the organisation that acknowledges the existence of diverse d/Deaf identities.

I believe the IDSA's 2011-2013 Strategic Plan to be a vital step in the achievement of this vision and that it will contribute to an increase in deaf athletes participation and enjoyment of sport.