The Sound of Opportunity

By Lauren Green

Navigating the world of youth sports is already challenging. 

For me, the basketball world has always been somewhat chaotic–you travel across the country to get the chance to play in front of college scouts and try to make your dreams of reaching the next level become reality by performing well. Simple, yes, uncontrollable, very. 

For me, I had been a point guard my entire life, directing my teammates on plays, and being pretty much like a coach on the court.

But being a great leader on the court means that you have to listen to your teammates, right? 

I would think so. 

At larger tournaments, I began to struggle to hear what my coaches and teammates were saying on the court. I thought that it was simply because of the number of games going on simultaneously on other courts, and I had a history of slight hearing loss on my left side, so I simply thought nothing of it.

Next thing you know, when I was having my yearly physical for sports, the nurse testing my hearing noticed some irregularities. I had a significant hearing deterioration on my left side. I thought nothing of it, really, I just thought that it was slightly worse than it was before.

I was wrong though.

After a visit with the audiologist, I found out how severe my hearing loss truly was. A couple of days after my sixteenth birthday, I was handed my hearing aid. 

After putting it into my ear, it felt so… loud?…

It felt like everything was amplified, and I realized how much I had not heard before. 

Instead of relying on my right ear and my guessing skills, I could hear everything. 

Going back out onto the basketball court with a hearing aid has only improved my game. I can rely on my ears once again, and I do not have to worry about not hearing my coaches or my teammates. While it is nice to hear, sometimes the microphone and the receiver on my hearing aid sound foggy, and it sounds as if I am underwater. 

After some research, I found out that there are currently no athletic hearing aids available on the market. So, since January 2021, I have been working on developing a sports hearing aid; by athletes, for athletes. This would hopefully allow athletes from all sports who have hearing loss to be able to fully participate without having any difficulty.

My hearing loss hasn’t made me any less of a basketball player or an athlete. Instead, it made me more grateful for what I have, and the opportunity to relate with and help many other young athletes who experience hearing loss, too! It’s amazing how sports in more than one way can bring people together that otherwise might not have ever come to know each other.