Deaf Paintball Players

[wanna-b-ballin']

i played some woodsball with a deaf guy once. he was dominating. he was a member of the ironmen back in the day, and although we was good, he couldn't tell when to stop hosing on the bushes because he couldn't hear the yells that the other guys were out. i had to pat him on the back a few times to tell him when kids were out or when games were over.

fuzzbutt: are we talking about the same guy? this was at paintball jungle in vallejo. maybe a year and a half ago.

[thahouse]

Its amazing that this thread actually exists on a forum. Not saying its bad or anything..just surprising for me lol. I was born deaf, and love ballin. Honestly, i dont have any trouble communicating with the rest of my team on the field. Then again, we tend to use military hand signals and we all know each other so well that even if we make up rediculous hand signals to communicate, we still understand eachother regardless...if any outsider tried to decipher what we were signalling...it would look like we are on crack half of the time haha. I am the only deaf player on the team. Hopefully we will get a chance to enter the qualifiers up here in canada and qualify for sppl...

As for hearing shots, i usually dont hear them, but i usually see the person pop up to shoot so i react from that. I guess its all a matter of knowing how to control and understand the field from a first person perspective and knowing approximately where the opponents are..

[jenarelJAM]

I played with a couple deaf players at my field a month ago or so. They did decently. Unfortunately, I didn't realize they were deaf until after the game... It definitely decreased our ability to communicate as a team for that game, but as we were just playing rec ball, it was all in good fun. I can honestly say I rely on hearing way to much to do anywhere near as well as they did were our roles reversed.

[Koz]

in '91 i biult a 34k square foot indoor field in the sf bay area called hyperball. several times the ironmen came out and played there, they had a def guy on the team at the time, i think his name was mike. needless to say he was very good (you dont play for the ironmen if you suck!). i think that the sences that compensate for the loss of hearing (or congenital lack of) carry over to pb qiute naturaly. dansim, your headaches are probably do to mild dehydration. drink more water between games and get into some cardiac workouts(dont take that the wrong way)

That was Mike "Silent Death" Sutherland. Kick butt paintball player and nice guy who played for DPA [Donner Party Animals and then the Ironmen]. I think he taught at the California School for the Deaf. His deafness was not an impediment for him in tournament paintball for sure.

Koz