Beckley Quota Club Encourages Deaf Youth

The Beckley Quota club in West Virginia, U.S.A., took local students on a road trip to South Carolina to meet a basketball star. Like the students, the player is both hearing-impaired and from Beckley.

Jamel Patrick Bradley (pictured on the left with his former teacher) lost 80 percent of his hearing to a fever when he was 18 months old. But the illness had no effect on his athletic ability, judging from the string of accomplishments the 23-year-old lists. The all-state high school basketball star set the state free throw record and went on to star for the University of South Carolina Gamecocks and set several records there. In the 2001 Deaflympics, he led the U.S.A. basketball team to a gold medal.

The hoop star graduated from USC in May 2002 with a bachelor's degree in administrative information management. And Beckley Quota club members smiled, remembering a young deaf child they had encouraged.

Role Model

The Beckley club enjoyed contact with Jamel as a local hearing-impaired youth who regularly attended their annual Christmas party. The club presented him with a vibrating watch for his 1998 high school graduation. When he developed into a college basketball star, the club decided to take other hearing-impaired kids from their hometown to meet him and watch him play.

Nancy Dingess, chair of the club's speech and hearing committee, coordinated the road trip that transported local youth to watch a Gamecock exhibition game in South Carolina. The club sponsored a bus and lunch at McDonald's on the long trip south. Bradley spoke to the kids when they arrived and showed them around USC's Frank McGuire Arena, where the game took place.

The Beckley Quota club is proud of their steady encouragement of Jamel. Says club member Cecile Sadowski, "We knew he would become a role model for deaf students and athletes across the nation, both on and off the basketball court!"