Sophia Poveda Plays Right On Cue

Dressed in a purple Stonehill uniform, and black spandex, with two braids leading into her ponytail, she steps on the court, heading past the back row of players getting ready to serve.

As she gets ready to serve her coach holds up one finger against his black notebook, indicating where to serve the volleyball. He holds up the finger so she can see the number, because the loud, chaos of the gym makes it too hard for her to hear.

She nods toward the coach. As she runs forward, left foot, right foot left, brown hair tied up in a pony tail swaying back and forth with every step, and then boom, she smacks the volleyball with the palm of her hand. It sails over the net, with the perfect angle to go down, and it hits the floor. Nobody could defend her serve.

The play continues, the ball floating above the net, and then she comes and smacks it right down to the floor. She steps up to serve again, looking over at her coach who gives the number two, with his hands. She nods. With the same rhythmic motion as before, the serve goes up, this time a player on the opposite team returns it, scoring a point. The game pauses for a moment, as new players come onto the court, each player holds up a different hand signal indicating where each new player has stepped on the court.

These hand signals are key to the success for junior, Sophia Poveda, on the Stonehill Volleyball team. When Poveda was 16 years old she lost 90% of her hearing in her right ear. This impairment has forced her to learn the game of volleyball differently.

Volleyball relies heavily on verbal communication, yelling out where the ball is, how many hits the other team had, and who is about to hit the ball. But for Poveda, she sometimes struggles to hear on the court.

Although she has hearing aids, they often malfunction because of the sweat that she produces during a game. The sweat will get into the hearing aids and often cause them to glitch, or not work at all.

Her teammates work together using hand signals and other nonverbal cues to ensure that Poveda doesn’t miss a beat while on the court.

Poveda, a captain of the volleyball team already has 215 kills, and 204 digs this season. This would not be possible without the constant communication between her teammates, herself and their coach, who is new to the team this year.

Poveda had to have a conversation early on with her coach about her hearing impairment, telling him that she is practically deaf in one ear, but it doesn’t make her any less of a player or incapable of doing anything. Both of Poveda’s college coaches have been understanding, and accommodating, and that’s all she needs them to be, is understanding.

The game of volleyball changed for her when she was 16 years old. Poveda, a native of Miami, Florida, and her friend were driving a moped down a familiar Miami street, when she turned a corner too tight and clipped the curb, sending her straight into the concrete wall. Neither was wearing a helmet.

A bystander rushed over to Poveda who woke up with a loud ringing in her ear. After arriving at the hospital Poveda’s parents were informed that she had extreme swelling in her brain. The ringing in her ear did not stop.

The doctors told her that the ringing should go away after 12 days. But it did not. That same ringing that started when she was 16 years old, still occurs in her right ear today.

Now Poveda wears a hearing aid in each ear. The right hearing aid has the ability to transmit a signal allowing her to hear out of her left ear, her good ear.

Her hearing impairment opened her family’s eyes to the deaf community. It made everyone in my family realize how valuable things in life are, especially their fives sense, she said.

As her and her family continue to learn about the deaf community they hope to give back to further research about hearing aids for student-athletes, at a cost affordable to college students.

As she continues to excel in the classroom, and on the volleyball court she hopes that young student-athletes who may have an impairment or disability never let that hinder their ability to be successful in whatever path they chose.

“I want them to remember that they are just as capable as anyone else, having a disability or impairment doesn’t mean you are any less capable,” Poveda said.