February 29, 2008 Deaf basketball team making forceful statement Play video

(NECN: Framingham, Mass.) - The Lady Ghosts play basketball at The Learning Center for the Deaf in Framingham, Massachusetts. The women are battling it out in the New England Prep Schools Tournament, and they are the only deaf team in the brackets.

SCRIPT:

"Irving King Jordan once said, "Deaf people can do anything... except hear."

So it is for the lady ghosts, the high school basketball team at the learning center for the deaf in Framingham, Massachusetts.

“It makes me happy. I just feel...free.”

The women are battling it out in the New England prep schools tournament - they are the only deaf team in the brackets.

“It’s like a sisterhood for us, we know each other really well, we learn from each other.”

“We have so much soul, so much spirit. We've grown up together.”

On Thursday night, the ghosts play Boston’s trinity Academy. Their players hear, the refs don’t sign.

“They’re going to need to wave if they're going to blow the whistle and give us hand signals so visually we can see if they're stopping a play.”

Is it more challenging playing a hearing team? Senior Danielle Sprague doesn’t think so.

“They do tend to have a little bit of an ego sometimes, maybe they don't think we're going to be very good and then once we beat them, we feel good and they realize that we're a really good team.”

(Signing in classroom)

The learning center accepts infants

thru high school students. Founded in 1970, it was the first deaf school in Massachusetts to allow kids to sign - a practice once so taboo, that children only did it in secret.

“They literally associated signing with the smell of the bathroom so sad. It's pretty sad when you think about it.”

Ally: I asked the girls what they most wanted hearing people to know about the deaf community and they each said almost the exact same thing -- that we're all just human beings.

“Sometimes they talk down to me. I think they don't fully understand what we're capable of.”

Assistant coach Peter Bailey says it's important for the two worlds to merge, on the court and off.

“Deaf children, deaf adults have to live with hearing people. I don't think it's fair to keep them isolated.”

The poised young women seem anything but isolated.

“I have wonderful friends here...in the public school system they wouldn't fully understand.”

On the court, the girls are 26-1 in the regular season, but it is coming to an end. Some of the seniors will soon move on.

“It’s very emotional for me to look back...know they're proud to.”

Which brings up another quote. This one from Helen Keller. She said, “One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."

In Framingham Massachusetts, Ally Donnelly