Michael Vega is hearing impaired.
By that, he was born deaf and has cochlear implants, a small electronic device in the ear to stimulate the auditory nerve with electrical signals.
Vega, 11, is a sixth grader at Manteca Unified’s Stella Brockman Elementary School. He previously attended schools for deaf children, including one in Rancho Cordova, according to his mother, Diane Jauregui.
Due to cost, she had to pull Michael Vega out of that school and into one closer to home.
The youngster experienced a few problems in the public school system. Vega said, via his sign language interpreter Joe Crossley on Thursday, that he was physically bullied.
“He’s big for his age,” Jauregui said.
Michael Vega expressed his frustration, looking back, and was in need of an outlet to “channel his anger.” Outside of a few karate lessons, he really hadn’t engaged in too much physical activities.
Yet he expressed that he really wanted to play football – Vega is a fan of both the San Francisco 49ers and the Las Vegas Raiders.
Jeremy Haskell, who serves as the athletic director for the Junior Manteca Buffs heard from Vega’s teacher along with a counselor that a hearing-impaired youngster was interested joining his program.
The only problem was that all the spots in Vega’s age group, the Jr. Buffs’ junior varsity team, were filled.
“We had a player drop out,” said Haskell, who was able to get Michael Vega on this year’s JV 40-player roster.
JV Jr. Buffs assistant coach Eddie Torres – the head coach is Derek Scalise – and others had to get the youngster into physical shape for the upcoming season. “(Michael) had an uphill climb,” he said.
Communication would offer up another problem.
Crossley, who is an East Union High graduate, has worked with Vega for nearly five years. He grew up with a deaf grandmother and both of his parents were interpreters.
He worked closely with the youngster on many of the day-to-day matters.
Crossley now had to interpret football to Vega, who is learning to play on the defensive line under longtime Jr. Buffs assistant coach Leon Bradford.
“He’s coming along,” Bradford said.
Vega, who joined the team in mid-July, overcame the grueling summer physical conditioning. Still, he needed a liaison to communicate instructions between him, Crossley, the coaching staff, and players.
Enter Daniel Mallory Kelley.
He was a 5-8. 300-pound lineman for Tokay High back in 2006 and did so while hearing impaired. Services for interpreters are provided at the high school level but not so for the youth football programs, said Kelley via Crossley.
Crossley has known Kelley – he’s listed as Daniel Mallory on the MaxPreps online site – for about 17 years and asked if he’d volunteered on a part-time basis to help as a liaison interpreter for Michael Vega.
Kelley had the experience of playing football as a deaf person and had plenty of knowledge with much of the terminology of the sport.
He’s been a regular at the Jr. Buffs practices. Plans call for he and Crossley to help Vega during games and practices throughout the season.
According to Torres, the cost for the interpreter is out of pocket for Jauregui, who is in need of financial support to have Crossley working with her son.
She currently has a GoFundMe account (https://gofund.me/6bd7f95d) in an effort to raise $5,000, receiving $1,000 so far via an anonymous donor.
Torres said that Vega continues to receive plenty of encouragement from his Jr. Buffs’ teammates.
“They love him,” Bradford added.
Jauregui was initially against her son playing football. She’s had second thoughts since, especially seeing the positive changes of late.
Haskell along with Jr. Buffs President Leon Munoz thought it was going to be difficult at first of having a deaf football player on the team.
“It turned out to be easy,” said Haskell. “It helped that everyone was on board.”
