The moment before I put on my national jersey, um
every time I'm overseas or competing in Australia
it's a really special feeling.
Hi my name is Sam Cartledge
And I'm the starting point guard of the Australian men's deaf basketball team
the Goannas.
There's different levels of deafness
we take our cochlear implants and hearing aids off
that way everyone's one the same level.
We communicate um via lip reading
using Auslan, it's a combination of communication methods.
Our coach has developed his own personal language
which he calls "Stretchlan"
His nickname is Stretch and he's just taken
the end of Auslan and added it to the end of his name.
I communicate with the guys through an interpreter a lot
through Stretchlan, through just being a complete lunatic and overacting a little bit as well.
I was born profoundly deaf in '93
my parents made the decision to get me a cochlear implant in my left ear.
Because I grew up hearing I didn't learn Auslan until
I was really involved with the deaf men's basketball team.
People who grow up who are deaf but have cochlear implants and hearing aids
they've learnt to talk
and so what the perception is, is they don't need sign language
but myself, knowing all these amazing deaf friends
who communicate using Auslan
it's just opened me up to this amazing culture
that I can't believe I missed out on growing up.
We use the standard curriculum that we would see
in every other school in Australia.
We just happen to deliver it in both English and Auslan at the same time.
So the teachers deliver the initial information
in both languages at the same time
then the students do the activity that they need to do
they're broken up into groups and it's not necessarily
put the deaf children together and the hearing children together
it's actually expected that the children will mix and they do.
Bree-Anna, she's a very good learner of Auslan.
She is the third child of four
within that family two of the children are deaf
and mum and dad are hearing.
They know a lot more sign language than me and Ian.
We'll be sitting at the table and they'd be signing
and I know some of the signs but then they look at me
or they're hiding while they're signing.
When you grow up what do you want to do, what?
Teacher.
Teacher?
Deaf teacher!
Oh a deaf teacher.
We found that for our hearing kids
they understand people's differences and accept them very easily.
I want something, I want something to eat.
There are thousands, thousands or even millions of signs.
I decided to learn sign language
two months after I met my boyfriend
because I thought wow, this guy is the guy.
Did you have the same experience when you saw Alex?
He actually told me through messages that he was deaf
but that was nothing to me. It wasn't like a shock. I was like, "oh cool."
The way we communicated before I started learning sign language
was basically through my lips
like, he read my lips though most of the times I had to repeat things
probably even five times
and I had to mime.
I want to be on the top when communicating with my boyfriend
that's the most important thing for me at the moment.
That's something that I've tried to do to understand the deaf community as well.
People who are hearing and have no idea about deaf
and hard of hearing people
they're not open, they haven't seen our community
they haven't seen how awesome being deaf really is.
A lot of people do say to me, "oh it's great what you are doing for these boys"
I'm coaching them at basketball but they're actually coaching me at life.
I really hope that it will be the norm no matter
how a person presents that you would accept and communicate with them
and accept them as they are.