By Matt Turer – @MattTurer – (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
It’s something most take for granted. The pop of a ball hitting a glove. The ping of an aluminum bat at contact. The harsh verbal lessons from a coach.
For Kaitlin Ragsdale, it’s not that easy. The Republic freshman is 90 percent deaf. She’s been this way since she was 2.5 years old. And maybe earlier than that.
She’s sitting inside head coach Lee Dishman’s office in late July talking about what’s expected to be a bright future at Republic. Her first varsity at-bat is still a month away, but her story isn’t a new one in Republic. She’s worn hearing aids for most of her life, playing sports with them since the third grade. She’s funny. She’s smart. And she’s faster than you.
“We don’t know for sure, but we think I was born with it,” Ragsdale said of her severe hearing loss. “We found out when I was about 2.5 years old. I had to use sign language first. Then, when I got hearing aids, I started being able to talk.”
Today, Ragsdale speaks as well as you and me. It may sound slightly different, but there’s no difference, really. She’s an expert lip reader, sometimes seeming to know what words are being spoken to her before they finish rolling off a person’s lips.
“I can read lips really well and can hear with my hearing aids in, but without hearing aids, I probably wouldn’t be able to hear you,” Ragsdale said.
Dishman first spoke of Ragsdale earlier this summer. Talking about her athletic potential before even getting to her hearing loss.
“She is one of the most athletic girls I’ve ever coached,” he said. “Plays basketball too. She’s a threat for Republic sports, pretty much. She is a Div. 1 speed kid. She’s going to be a player to watch.”
So far, so good. Ragsdale is hitting .474 through five games for Republic, and showing off her speed too. (She already has nine steals.)
Pretty incredible for a freshman on a Class 4 program. Even more incredible considering what she’s had to learn to play without.
“It’s tough [to hear] with my helmet on,” she said. “I focus on the play and not on anything around me. I can hear coach giving commands. But playing with them was hard at first. Everyone kept asking me [about the hearing aids], but it got so much easier. I was able to tell them that I was born with it, and here I am.”
But it’s not always easy. Especially before her teammates knew about her hearing.
“Last year she came in to work out with us, and some of our older girls told her to do something. And they thought she was ignoring her,” Dishman said, smiling.
“It’s funny. I’ll get mad and raise my voice at her, and she just looks at me, you know. Or, I’ll say stuff at her and get after and she comes up to me and says, ‘OK.’ I tell my assistant coach I don’t know if she got it, but it’s whatever.”
In softball, the process is simpler. Ragsdale has time between plays to look at her base coaches. Plus, this is a sport that already utilizes hand signals for play calls. But in basketball, life gets tougher.
“As long as she’s looking at you, she’s fine, but when she turns her back to go do something, it’s really hard. Basketball is probably one of her toughest things to do,” Dishman said. “You get her in a gym, it’s just the echoing and stuff like that can drive her nuts. It’s hard for her to understand far away. But she’s a smart kid. She’s picked it up quick.”
But when you ask Ragsdale about it, it’s nothing but a thing. It’s easy to see that this is a girl who doesn’t view her hearing loss as anything even resembling a problem. If anything, in many ways, she talks about it positively. She’s taught sign language to her best friend so they can talk whenever they want. No need for passing notes.
“I think it’s really cool,” she said. “When people can’t sleep at night, I can have a wonderful sleep. Because I don’t have to hear that kind of stuff. I just turn my hearing aids off and I’m like, ‘Hey, this is great.’”
