Emerald Coast United U18/17 to scrimmage deaf team

By WILL PARCHMAN

Northwest Florida Daily News
315-4484 | willp@nwfdailynews.com

As the head coach of the men's and women's U.S. National Deaf Soccer teams, Ken MacDonald runs into misconceptions wherever he goes.

"That's the biggest problem with saying you're a deaf coach or athlete, people have an impression that they're kind of handicapped in other ways as well," said MacDonald, who added that 75 percent of his players can hear normal conversation. "But most of my men's players are lawyers, doctors, teachers and so on. They're career people and they're very, very intelligent. They're just normal people."

MacDonald and assistant Carl Everitt are currently preparing both squads for the 2009 Deaflympics in Taipei, Taiwan from Sept. 5-15, an event that takes place every four years that showcases the world's best deaf soccer athletes. As a final tune-up, the woman will be squaring off against Everitt's U18/17 Emerald Coast United club squad at 6 p.m. on Sunday at Steve Riggs Stadium. The men, meanwhile, have friendlies against Bayside today and Perdido Key on Saturday.

The women's team will be defending its gold medal and perfect record from the Australia Deaflympics in 2005 while the men look to improve on a ninth-place finish out of the 10 qualified squads.

Everitt said coaching deaf players took some getting used to. To qualify, each player must hear a maximum of 65 decibels in their best ear, and as a coach Everitt said it makes for some quiet games.

"(Coaching) the deaf girls is bizarre because it's that communication," Everitt said. "When I play with other girls you can show them stuff, yell, correct them. When they're deaf it's just a different approach."

The lengths to which the team has to go just to get to these events baffles MacDonald at times. The teams get no funding from the U.S. Soccer Federation, the governing body of U.S. soccer, so the onus falls on the individual players to raise the necessary funding to travel to the event, a tough task for an organization that MacDonald termed "destitute."

"The men's team is a little more fortunate because a lot of the men work, but even some of those guys can't commit because they can't raise $5,000," MacDonald said. "I'm basically going with two teams who are 50 percent capacity of what they could be so it's going to be a real tough job over there."

Even for the players who aren't college students, raising $5,000 for a trip to Taiwan has not been an easy task, leaving the program almost completely dependent on donations. With only 13 women's players currently available for the trip due to money and scheduling conflicts, the team's success might depend on them.

"We can't even send some of the coaching staff," said MacDonald, who added that other programs receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from their respective soccer federations. "They have to pay their own fare, and these coaches have been working for nothing for six years and now they have to find their own money. It's a crazy situation compared to what other countries have."

All proceeds from Sunday's women's game will go toward the U.S.'s trip to the 2009 Deaflympics.