When staff at the B.C. Provincial School for the Deaf (BCSD) got an invitation to the Western States Basketball and Cheerleading Classic in Washington State last year, they were psyched.
There was just one problem – they didn’t have a basketball team.
Youth worker Jodi Birley wasn’t going to let that get in the way of a great opportunity, though.
She knew there were some basketball players at the school who had kept playing despite being unable to break into the Burnaby South Rebels roster, so she cobbled a team together, and Burnaby’s newest high school basketball team was born – the B.C. Grizzlies.
“I couldn’t bear the idea of letting such a great opportunity pass for our young athletes just because nobody is able to help them,” said Birley, who is deaf and spoke to the NOW via email and American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters. “I grew up an athlete myself, so I knew how important it is to be actively involved in sports if you want to gain a new world of experience, perspectives, and personal benefits …”
That didn’t mean the Grizzlies’ beginnings were all smooth sailing.
BCSD hadn’t had a team since before the school moved onto the Burnaby South Secondary campus from Vancouver in 1992.
“We kind of had to do this from scratch,” said Birley, who took on coaching duties and coordinated the Washington trip in the team’s first year. “We had a real mixed team, and at first it was kind of a little bit iffy. Some kids didn’t even know some of the basic rules, so we had to do a lot of teaching and educating about the fundamentals of basketball.”
Despite the shaky start, however, the Grizzlies managed to pull off a win at their first-ever tournament, an annual competition put on by deaf schools in Oregon, Arizona, Washington and Utah.
But the win was only a small part of the bigger benefits the team took away from the trip, according to Birley.
Coming from a small school and a smallish B.C. deaf community, the Grizzlies were suddenly surrounded by players from five other deaf teams and their fans.
“Hands were flying in the air everywhere,” Birley said. “It was really inspiring to see the students; they were exchanging email addresses, getting each other’s Facebook and really socializing with all of the kids from all over the place. That gave me a new hope about the future and about networking. Maybe we can do some exchanges in the future with the American deaf schools, so it kind of opened up the world for us in that sense.”
The Grizzlies wrapped up their second season this winter after another tournament in Montreal, and the team, which has grown from eight to 11, is making a big difference in the lives of the people involved and to the school, according to Birley.
Volunteer coach Devin Aikin, a BCSD alumnus and former Burnaby South Rebels player, is one example.
Through coaching the Grizzlies, Birley said, Aikin has discovered a new passion – passing on his love of basketball to kids.
Toward that end, he recently earned his National Coach Certification Program Level 2 at Langara College.
Grizzlies players, meanwhile, have gained confidence and motivation playing on a team that communicates in ASL, according to Birley.
“They get to encourage each other, share perspectives, develop a positive bond and even learn more technical vocabularies that they never knew before,” Birley said. “We’ve created an environment where they feel comfortable to make mistakes and to learn from them without feeling condescended or judged.”
One player whose life has been transformed by the Grizzlies, is 17-year-old Benjamin Idemudia.
Since last playing on a hearing team in Grade 8, the point guard had been unable to make it onto a Burnaby South Rebels team.
Undaunted, he recruited friends to practice with him in the school gym at lunch and the brand-new Edmonds Community Centre gym after school and on the weekends.
But playing on a school team seemed out of reach – until last year.
“Seriously, I was so excited,” Idemudia told the NOW through an interpreter.
On a deaf team, he said, he faced none of the barriers he had encountered on hearing teams.
“On the hearing teams it’s really challenging to communicate,” Idemudia said. “They talked, and I’m deaf, so I can’t hear them. They don’t gesture as much, and so, you know, they don’t really show. But on the deaf team, we sign, so I can understand everything that they’re saying, and I know what play we’re using.”
Idemudia has made the most of the opportunity, and, in January, he was singled out by the coach of the deaf national team.
He joined the squad for the USA deaf basketball national tournament in Oakland, Calif. last month, and he will play with them again in Boston next year and at the Pan American Games in a two years’ time.
The dream is to make it to the 2017 Samsun, Turkey Deaflympics.
Asked about the difference the Grizzlies basketball team has made in his life, Idemudia – who came to Canada from Nigeria when he was seven – was a loss for words for a few moments.
“I don’t know. It changed my life,” he said. “The first time I joined the team, I really felt like a Canadian. I felt like I was involved because, you know, before that I hadn’t had that kind of chance.”
