King of the Court

So much so that, although he finished his secondary school education only this year, he has already been offered a football scholarship to a US university, and has drawn the attention of other recruiters. Kushaiah King, 19, is a member of the National Under 19 Basketball Team and the only impaired team member out of 15. He also plays on the National Deaf Basketball Team, for the West in the TT Deaf Basketball League, and in the Central Zone of the Brian Chase Basketball Academy.

Although King has only been playing in various local leagues for the past five years, he has been playing basketball since he was eight-years-old. Sunday Newsday spoke to King and his mother, Kathy Ann King, and was told that King’s father, used to coach the Brian Chase Basketball Academy’s Women’s team, of which is mother was a member.

“When we went to practice we would take him with us. When we were training, he would do what we did and so he trained as well,” recalled Kathy Ann.

Despite years of training, he only started to play competitively at age 15 when he joined the basketball team at South East Secondary School. He then played with a team from Belmont, followed by the Brian Chase Basketball Academy’s Senior team, where he is the youngest person on the team and even won Most Valuable Player in the Central League last year.

However, King stressed that he loves football just as much as he does basketball. He is a member of the New Millennium Football Club in Belmont where he is a striker, but he said he could play in almost any position on the football field. “My father played football and basketball and I wanted to play both too,” he said.

Kathy Ann recalled she and her husband taking King to Texas when he was a year and a half when they realised “something was wrong”. She said she was awed by the equipment and programmes available for the hearing impaired, and impressed by the advice they were given to help their son. However, they were severely disappointed when they returned to TT and realised all the schools and organisations had to offer was Sign Language.

“At primary school level, when you go to the Cascade School for the Deaf, they have no speech therapist. One teacher told me some of the children don’t even know they have a voice because they are not encouraged to use it,” said Kathy Ann.

She stressed that King is not completely deaf but that his hearing level is severe to profound.

“His hearing is just below speech level so everything is distorted to him, he would not understand what people are saying. The hearing aid amplifies the sound so that he could hear clearly,” she explained.

“Since that is the case, why limit him to sign language if hearing would help him to speak? Why give them hearing aids and make them aware of the sounds, and not put something in place to train it?” she asked.

King’s parents made the decision not to take him to any school for the deaf but instead taught him, at home, how to speak. He then attended “normal” schools from preschool to secondary school. He admitted that, up to primary school he could not make full sentences but he can now, although some letters are harder for him to pronounce.

Then, when he began playing for the deaf team about five years ago, he started to pick up sign language and could now understand enough to carry on a conversation.

King noted that he sat his Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSE C) this year, but did not perform very well. In spite of this, he has already been offered a football scholarship at a university in Maryland.

“School is a challenge for him and so he focuses on sports. We try to explain to him that the two go hand-in-hand. I think that scholarship happened too quickly and initially they did not know he was hearing impaired so I don’t think things were in place for him,” Kathy Ann interjected.

King then admitted that reading was a challenge, and that he sometimes get frustrated. However, Kathy Ann added, “When it comes to Maths and he’s dealing with numbers, he could do that, and he wants to do it. But when he has to do a lot of reading then he starts to shut down, he doesn’t understand everything.

The thing is, once he wants to do something, he goes at it hard so we know he can do it.” Kathy Ann expressed her disappointment that there were few special education teachers in the country, and those few are not equipped to teach at that level.

She gave the example of the Special Education teacher at South East who, even though Kathy Ann described her as a superwoman, could only do so much.

She said the Special Education teacher would translate the regular classes to sign language for the hearing impaired students, but it was rare that the teachers would slow down or stop to allow her to further explain a point. Also, because the class was so large, the hearing impaired was not able to receive individual attention so they would be at a disadvantage.

She also complained about the lack of speech therapists in the country, saying that, in her experience, many were inconsistent, unreliable, or simply located too far away to attend regularly.

Despite the many challenges, Kathy Ann stressed that she and her husband never treated him as disabled or even differently than his two older brothers. She noted that all her children grew up on the basketball court, but King was the only one who wanted to play professionally.

Whatever he wants to do with his life, however, King said he knows he would always have the love, help, support, and encouragement of his family.