Hearing-Impaired Richards Nose Tackle Makes Plenty of Noise on the Football Field

Watch Barron Shepard play football on Friday nights. Go ahead, try to identify what is different about the 5-foot-11, 200-pound senior nose tackle.

Barron uses his strength and quickness to take on double teams, cause havoc for offensive lines and allow Richards’ linebackers to roam free. In that way, he is no different than any accomplished defensive lineman.

But look closer.

It’s only after the play that you might notice something different. Like any player, Barron looks over to the sideline to get the play call, but he doesn’t focus exclusively on the coaching staff. Instead, he also looks to his interpreter for the signs. Not the comedic body motions that come with no-huddle offenses in college football, but actual sign language indicating the next play.

“With football, I really depend on my interpreter and my coaches to talk to me so I can understand,” Barron said.

He was born deaf. Without his hearing aid, he wouldn't know what it's like to hear the quarterback bark out a cadence. Nor would he know what it's like to hear the birds chirping in the trees in his own backyard.

He met Mary Sesol, his current interpreter, through the Eisenhower Cooperative–a special education program that provides deaf/hard of hearing services among other programs--when he was 4 years old. Barron wasn’t put into mainstream school until fifth-grade mathematics.

Through years of speech therapy, learning to read lips and help from a number of different hearing aids, Barron has adapted well enough that there are times when he doesn’t have the help of an interpreter.

“When I’m outside of school, I don’t have an interpreter with me, so I have to depend on myself to read people’s lips and understand what they’re talking about,” he said.

After moving out to Arizona, Barron came back to Richards for his junior year of high school. He was prepared to play football for the Bulldogs in 2010 until an ankle injury sidelined him for the season.

This year, Barron was ready to play. He earned the starting job at nose tackle and has helped Richards to a 1-1 record through its first two games.

But the transition to having Barron on the field was a change for all parties involved.

“We’ve never had anything like this. This is a new experience for everyone,” Richards coach Tony Sheehan said. “At first, it was a little bit of an adjustment because that’s not a usual thing.”

Sesol, who helps Barron in classes throughout the school day, also was attending football practices and games. This was new to her as well. She had been an interpreter for a student in the marching band, but never in football, a sport she was unfamiliar with.

“I don’t know that many plays or positions, so I have to figure that out and a lot of times there are no signs for that,” Sesol said. “We have to figure out those signs and just make sure we’re communicating so that sign we made up is the same thing that we’re talking about.”

After an entire summer of training camp sessions and practices, Barron and Sesol are entirely integrated into Richards football in practices and on game days. Sheehan said Sesol is just like another member of the coaching staff and Barron’s teammates work with him on the field.

“They know where I’m coming from, so they know how to work with me,” Barron said. “We communicate really well. It flows together.”

And that also means Barron gets no special treatment from coaches when it comes to criticism. He runs the end-of-practice sprints and does the extra repetitions.  

But that’s what he wants, and what he’s worked so hard to get: the entire high school football experience.

“(Football is) a lot of fun for me,” Barron said. “I’m ready to prove myself this year.”