RIVERSIDE, CA -- Marcus Chmaj is an expressive football coach. To get his point across, he gets close. He crouches. He grimaces. The boys, all 7 or 8 years old, stand attentive, watching his every move.
The boys watch him closely because they can’t hear him speak. That’s because Chmaj can neither speak nor hear. “I use a lot of body language and gesturing,” Chmaj says through a sign language interpreter. “They pick it up faster that way.”
Chmaj, pronounced “Sshmahj,” is the first Deaf head coach in the history of Riverside’s Orangecrest Junior All-American League.
The league first reached out to the Deaf community a few years ago, said league President Danny Cisneros, to “bridge the gap” between those who can hear and those who can’t.
Now team rosters include about a dozen deaf players, two of whom play on Chmaj’s team and one of whom is Chmaj’s son Donovan, 7.
Sometimes Chmaj, 35, communicates by writing in a notepad or typing into a note-taking app. Occasionally Aaron Chase Molina-Milbourne, 24, a Riverside City College sign language student, volunteers as translator.
In ten years of coaching football, basketball and soccer, mostly at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, this is Chmaj’s first time at the helm of a hearing team... Read The Full Story.
