Silence on the track by T-Wrecks

dinosaur_tea

So imagine, you’re skating, you’re low, you’re strong- your team mates are right there beside you. There’s a roar of noise. It’s a crowd of people shouting, whistles blowing, and wheels hitting the deck- but you hear….

Noise. Or silence.

Hi I’m T-Wrecks!

I’m going to do something I very rarely do- speak about something intensely private and personal to me.

I was born with nerve damage to my hearing. They discovered it when i was about 6 weeks old. I run with different hearing levels in each ear. My right hand side is classified as severe to profound, and my left ear is a bit better at just severe. Which puts me into the pretty damn deaf range. My hearing isn’t so great, especially in really noisy situations where i can’t really see what is going on, and there’s some pitches i just can’t hear at all. But I can read lips like no-ones business and you wont see me whinge about my hearing till someone headbutts me in the ear!

Okay so people are going to ask- how does a deaf girl play derby? With patience- mine and yours. With awesome communication, and not being adverse to being thrown around by your team mates (actually truth be told I enjoy that bit).

In reality it’s not that much different to how anyone else plays derby. I train. They train. I fall over. They fall over. Someone blows a whistle and people scatter- that’s my cue to get the heck out of dodge. Best thing is about derby and being deaf- Everyone is using their derby VOICE. There’s even some equality in it- do you know how hard it is to understand someone talking around their mouth guard??? For the first time ever I’m almost on equal ground, that my friend is pretty liberating.

Bad thing is- in scrim there’s so much noise and it’s frantic, you’re going to have to come up with some hand signals for you and your team. Even forming some good partnerships where subtle signals can be used instead of wild gesticulations. But just know- there are some of us out there doing it already, and not just deaf girls.

It’s fun! Come on… take a walk on the wild side.