RVC's Parker inspires on and off the field

At first glance, Katherine Parker appears to be just like any other player on the South Side High School girls’ lacrosse team. The senior defenseman shadows one of the opposing forwards, barks out plays and tries to create offense with strong outlet passes or by simply carrying the ball into the offensive zone.

While all that is happening, there is constant noise on and around the field: players shouting instructions to one another, whistle-blowing from the referees signaling fouls or goals, cheers of encouragement from parents and friends in the stands.

But Parker struggles to recognize any of it due to her profound hearing loss.

She has had the condition since she was an infant, but it hasn’t stopped her from being a High Honor Roll student and a top player in two varsity sports. Her skills earned her a partial lacrosse scholarship from the University of Connecticut.

Her mother, Karen, recalled that Katherine was stricken with pertussis, the virus that causes whooping cough, when she was around 5 months old. She failed her first hearing test at age 3, and was fitted with her first hearing aid a year later.

“At about 18 months, her speech was very delayed, so she started getting speech therapy,” Karen said. “But at that point she couldn’t really hear, but we didn’t know yet. You’re not really given a valid test until you’re 3 or 4.”

Audiologists classified Katherine’s hearing loss as “moderate” for low-frequency sounds and “profound” for those of higher frequencies, including those referees’ whistles, smoke alarms and chirping birds, which she cannot hear.

According to hear-it.org, people with moderate hearing loss have difficulty following conversations without hearing aids, and those with profound hearing loss rely mostly on lip-reading and/or sign language to communicate.

“She will hear that you’re speaking, but she might not make out the words,” her mother said. “Imagine hearing someone say, ‘Let’s go to the store,’ without hearing the l, g, t, th or st. The hearing aids help, but still don’t bring her to her normal hearing. Over years of coping, her brain has assigned sounds to these indecipherable sounds so that she understands language and uses inference clues and reads lips.”

Katherine does not wear a hearing aid on the field out of concern for her safety, so she cannot hear the whistle blow while playing. Her coaches have had to tell referees about her condition before games and request that they use hand signals when making calls.

“I try not to look at it as a disability and not let it overcome me. I wanted to overcome it,” she said after South Side’s 19-6 drubbing of Oyster Bay on April 28, which pushed the Cyclones’ record to 7-0 in the Nassau II Conference and 9-3 overall. “I never really pay much attention to it because I want to be like everyone else.”

Many of Parker’s coaches and teammates said they had no idea she had a hearing issue until long after they met her. “It was really surprising, because I started playing with her in third grade and I didn’t even learn about her hearing disability until fifth grade,” said South Side junior Ailis DeTomasso, a longtime friend. “It never affected her personality or her game. It was hard to tell.”

And that’s exactly the way Parker wanted it. “I don’t really tell people about it,” she said. “If they don’t see my hearing aid, they don’t know, and I work through it. I never use it to an advantage. It’s a part of my personality. I just want to be as hard-working as everyone else.”

She began playing lacrosse in third grade, and fell in love with the game. She eventually became a four-year starter on the varsity squad, and her strong defense earned her All-County honorable mention in 2015-16.

“She’s very fast, a very good stickhandler and sees the field well,” said varsity coach Robert Devlin. “When it’s time to transition the ball upfield, she has three different ways she can get it up: She’s either running it, making the outlet pass or she’s just cradling it in and out of traffic.”

Perhaps the most memorable moment of Parker’s high school career came on April 9, 2015. When playing forward, she scored the game-winning goal in overtime in South Side’s 11-10 victory over Kellenberg.

Her teammates chose her as a co-captain this season. “I love them,” Parker said. “They’re my best friends. In the classroom and on the field, they help me with everything.”

Her intensity also made her a stalwart defenseman on South Side’s varsity soccer team, which went 11-3-4 last season. “She had to tell me that she had a hearing disability, because she never skips a beat,” said soccer coach Shannon McEntee. “I think it makes her, if anything, a better player. She’s more aware of her surroundings, she’s more in tune with her teammates. She’s a phenomenal player.”

In the classroom, Parker uses a hearing aid and an FM system to hear teachers’ instructions and lectures. They clip a microphone to their clothing to help amplify their speech. She does need to be tapped on the shoulder whenever there’s a fire drill.

Parker hopes to become a special education teacher, and to use her experiences to inspire her future students. “I want to use what I have to motivate them in the classroom,” she said. “I’d tell them everything that I’ve done and that it doesn’t matter what you have. You can do anything you want to do as long as you’re hard-working and put your mind to it.”