Florida Tech Men’s Lacrosse Team Supports Hearing-Impaired Teammates

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Catch any Florida Tech lacrosse game on campus, and the sounds of the game will become quite familiar: pads and helmets making almost constant contact; the whistles of the officials; coaches shouting plays and adjustments to players communicating, in turn, with each other; the roar of the sidelines and stands when the Panthers score. (Florida Tech image)

BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Catch any Florida Tech lacrosse game on campus, and the sounds of the game will become quite familiar: pads and helmets making almost constant contact; the whistles of the officials; coaches shouting plays and adjustments to players communicating, in turn, with each other; the roar of the sidelines and stands when the Panthers score.

But Panther men’s lacrosse players Drew Haffner and Griffin Martin only hear these sounds in their imaginations. Haffner suffers from partial hearing loss, while Martin is almost fully deaf.

Martin, a biomedical engineering senior who transferred to Florida Tech from Division I’s New Jersey Institute of Technology, found lacrosse after a hit while playing football caused one of his cochlear implants to stop working.

After doctors recommended that he give up football immediately, family members suggested he take up lacrosse. Martin initially bristled at picking up a new sport until he realized it could take him places.

He knew he had a chance to become an example for others who could relate to what he was going through.

“It’s always been my dream to overcome challenges and obstacles, and I’ve always had the mindset that I can do anything I put my mind to,” Martin says. “There’s not a lot of deaf athletes in sports, let alone lacrosse. So, I also want to be a role model for not just those who have hearing loss, but also for those who have disabilities, to show that it doesn’t limit what we do.”

Haffner, a freshman from Missouri City, Texas, just outside of Houston, is motivated by his condition.

“I didn’t want my disability to be my identity,” Haffner says. “I didn’t want that to take over like, ‘Oh, I’m just a kid with hearing loss.’ I didn’t want to be at a different school and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t play lacrosse because of my hearing loss.’”

There’s not a lot of deaf athletes in sports, let alone lacrosse. So, I also want to be a role model for not just those who have hearing loss, but also for those who have disabilities, to show that it doesn’t limit what we do.”

Given the importance of communication in team sports, Haffner and Martin’s teammates and coaches have done whatever they can to make sure the pair is never out of the loop with what’s happening on the field.

Together, they came up with different ways to communicate with Haffner and Martin, who join the Panthers in attack as midfielders, about which plays they are running. Sometimes, it might be a hand gesture to mimic an animal that the play is named after; other times, it can be as simple as the pull of a shirt sleeve.

“We expect them to be good kids here and to help their teammates when they can,” says assistant coach and offensive coordinator Zach Wynne ’16. “So yeah, it does bring a smile to our face. It makes us happy to look over and see somebody run Griffin through something or get Drew ready for that next drill and say, ‘Hey, I’ll tap you on the shoulder to go in, since you can’t hear the whistle’—things of that nature.”

“You start thinking outside the box about how to keep the team involved, since Griffin’s getting ready to graduate and Drew’s coming in,” says head coach Brad MacArthur.

“We’ve got three more years, and Drew is different from Griffin, but I’m just glad that we have that experience as a staff to know what to do. Because if we have another player come in who needs those accommodations, we’re not going to shy away from that.”

MacArthur, who has prior experience coaching a deaf player, believes it’s the team’s responsibility to make sure Haffner and Martin receive the information and tactics necessary to best help the Panther offense.

“They’ve probably taught us more than we’ve taught or been able to take on our own,” says MacArthur.

“Especially Griffin because he’s been able to provide us with some perspective and ideas of how to help get through it during the time we’ve been here. Ninety percent of the communication that we refer to is oral and heard, so we rely on his teammates to help. At practice, we’ll talk to guys and just say, ‘Make sure Griffin knows,’ and they’ll explain it, but he does a bang-up job.”

When Haffner, a mechanical engineering major, made his recruiting trip to Florida Tech, Martin made sure to introduce himself and assure him that he would always have someone in his corner if he made the journey to Melbourne. He told Haffner everything he thought he should know before becoming a part of the program: how the team would be understanding of his condition and that it wouldn’t prevent him from being “one of the guys.”

Martin wanted Haffner to be better prepared from the start than he was.