Deaf woman dazzles KU Jayhawks soccer team with goal-scoring ability

From the intro to an ESPN story:

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- If Emily Cressy (in the center of the picture) is most easily defined by what she cannot do, it's only from a distance. She already has defined herself by what she loves to do.

In her first season on the field for the University of Kansas women's soccer team, Cressy is the primary attacking catalyst for an improved squad that has aspirations of capturing its second Big 12 title. Just more than an hour into her first collegiate match, Cressy found the back of the net to help propel the Jayhawks past a nationally ranked Purdue team. She leads the Jayhawks with five goals through seven games, a big reason for the side's 6-2-0 start. She already has scored as many goals as last season's most prolific scorer, Nicole Cauzillo, did in 21 games.

"Goal scoring," teammate Rachel Morris said of what sets Cressy apart. "She's an amazing finisher. We just play her balls over the top that we might not play another player because that's like her specialty. She always finishes
that. She's a goal scorer."

Cressy isn't the fastest forward, nor is the 5-foot-5 Californian blessed with unique size or strength. But even as she warms up before a game, it's easy to see the instincts that make her successful. The ball glides easily in front of her, content to stay at her feet until the moment she commands otherwise. Some strikers shoot the ball with all the scattershot accuracy of a smoothbore musket; Cressy's shots are rifled on more precise trajectories.

But warm-ups also reveal another side of Cressy's story. As she stands with her back to the sideline, eyes focused on the goal during drills, two people approach from behind. With a tap on the shoulder, Cressy turns and receives some last-minute instructions from an assistant coach -- instructions relayed to her by the team's sign language interpreter.

Cressy is a goal scorer; she also is deaf. Her perseverance in reconciling those two labels is a reminder that the latter is less a life story than a chapter thereof.

"I had never played with anyone deaf or even seen anyone deaf play," said Morris, who arrived with Cressy last year and shared a dorm suite with her. "We were all just kind of curious on how she could play, being deaf, and how good she was going to be and whatnot. And then when we met her, she had a really cute personality, and we all just kind of fell in love with her."

Although Cressy has been hearing-impaired since birth, her worldview changed dramatically one morning during her sophomore year in high school when said she woke up to a strange noise in her right ear. Subsequent tests confirmed that what limited hearing had existed in her right ear was gone. Before, hearing aids had allowed her to learn to speak and to hear and understand conversations -- even conversations going on behind her. But she suddenly found herself all
but cut off from the audible world around her.

"I couldn't handle it at first," Cressy said. "I didn't go to school for a while because I was just so upset about it. I was embarrassed, too, because I wasn't used to being like that."

After a few days, she returned to school and gradually grew more accustomed to her new reality and more comfortable with herself. But acceptance of the idea that only her perception of the outside world, and not the person perceiving it, had changed didn't mean that new challenges vanished. There had been sign language interpreters in Cressy's high school classes before she suffered the additional hearing loss, but she admitted she had never paid them much attention as long as she could hear the teacher. Now she relied on them.

"I would talk really loud because I couldn't hear myself," Cressy said of her initial adjustment. "And then I had to depend on my interpreter, which was really hard for me. I didn't really know sign language at that moment, so I was learning."

Through the ensuing ups and downs, soccer remained a constant in her life. She played basketball, volleyball and softball with varying degrees of interest. Volleyball, in particular, was difficult because of the constant vocal communication to sort out individual responsibilities when the ball was in play. But soccer always mattered most. And it was there, as a soccer prospect atypical only in her goal-scoring ability, that she came to Kansas coach Mark Francis' attention.

Aware of her outstanding record in club and regional soccer -- she subsequently won Golden Boot honors as the top player at the 2007 U.S. Youth Soccer National Championships -- Francis took time out during a team road trip to San Diego three years ago to watch Cressy play for Buena High School. Although it was apparent to him from the outset that she was deaf, what he saw with the ball at her feet was what registered.

"I don't think [her deafness] really had any influence, to be honest," Francis said. "She was a good player, a good kid. Those were really the main things we were looking at. We figured that part of it, it was going to be something new, but we'd figure it out."

Doing so meant seeking out Kim Bates, the interpreter coordinator within the Office of Disability Resources at the University of Kansas. And when Cressy committed to Kansas, Francis handed her a folder full of material about the support network that awaited her.

Providing sign language interpreters for all students who need them, as well as other accommodations for students with lesser hearing impairments, is required under Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. But making any program a functional reality at an individual level depends on people like Bates acting more as tireless advocates than tired bureaucrats. Cressy is one of seven students for whom Bates is coordinating interpreters this fall. It's a task she likened to assembling a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle without a picture. She has to take into account disparate class schedules and must ensure that interpreters in advanced-level courses have at least some knowledge of a subject's basic vocabulary. In Cressy's case, it also meant working with the athletic department to find an interpreter who could be there -- home or away, practice or game.

"It does take more effort on everybody's part," Bates said of interpreter services in general. "Even with having an interpreter there, that helps alleviate some of the effort, but it's still a very team approach. So I take that team approach, whether it's in the classroom or out on the soccer field, that all parties involved have to be working together to have the best success and the best communication."