Gallaudet women's volleyball team is signing, quietly winning and rolling into the NCAA Tournament

WASHINGTON — Laughs and the occasional celebratory scream pierce the calm quiet of the gym and the sound of volleyballs bouncing off the hardwood floor.

It is practice time at Gallaudet University for the women’s volleyball team, which is made up almost entirely of deaf and hard of hearing players and led by a deaf coach. Gallaudet is preparing to play in the Division III NCAA Tournament, the next step in an incredible season for players who do their talking in American Sign Language and are thriving in a sport that for most teams relies heavily on verbal communication.

“There are times where people think that we’re just trying to distract other teams,” senior middle hitter Jada Zarembka said in ASL through an interpreter. “In actuality, that’s how we communicate with one another. But if that’s how others want to see it — as simply a ploy to distract them — let it be that.”

Zarembka and her teammates are 30-4, captured a second consecutive United East Conference title and have won 22 matches in a row going into their tournament opener on Thursday. The Bison have not even lost a set in a month on the way to the first back-to-back 30-win seasons in coach Lynn Ray Boren's nearly two decades in charge.

“This is best team that I’ve coached,” Boren said in ASL. “It’s really just been a fun team to watch.”

Volleyball is popular in the Deaf community because of the face-to-face nature of the action, and banners commemorating conference championships line the walls of the field house on campus in the nation's capital. Gallaudet has not won a game in the NCAA Tournament since 2006, and three victories in the regional this week in Newport News, Virginia, would put the school into the Elite Eight for the first time.

Getting to this point was a culmination of adding a couple of transfers, taking a trip overseas to learn more about each other on and off the court, and players honing their communication with signing while opponents talk to and hear each other during fast-paced matches.

“Communicating throughout the school year, in our practices, we try to have more visual language, and other opponents are seeing something new that they’ve never seen until they face us,” said Boren, who played football, baseball, basketball and tennis at the Texas School for the Deaf before getting a master's at Gallaudet and beginning his coaching career here in 2005. “Most offenses rely on audible plays, especially in the middle hitters. And when it comes to setters, there’s an in sync communication that generally happens, whereas it’s a little bit different for us.”

Different has been great for Gallaudet, which leads Division III in team service aces and ranks second in aces per set and third in hitting percentage. The transfer combination of setter Ella Gamble and outside hitter Brielle Worley has made all the difference after each player joined following concerns about being overlooked and isolated while playing for hearing teams.

“At my past school, I felt like I struggled to get along with my teammates and my coaches, being able to connect,” said Gamble, a hard of hearing athlete who's in her second season after joining from Carson-Newman. “I had to make sure I was accommodated for. And I can speak fine for myself, and when I have my implants, I can hear. But I still didn’t totally feel like I belonged on the team or I connected with the team.”

Worley started at Division I North Texas, then spent a year at UT-Tyler before finally finding a home at Gallaudet.

“It was always a struggle for me to rely on verbal communication because I couldn’t hear very well, so really when I came here and I finally learned to sign pretty fluently, it felt more natural,” said Worley, who like Gamble is hard of hearing but can speak verbally. “It wasn’t like we needed to scream and make noise for no reason because that’s what it started to feel like at my other universities. I think it’s just a better match for me, and I think it’s a really effective way of communicating.”

Effective, especially because players on other teams do not often understand ASL and that nonverbal language is a unique advantage in setting up plays or game strategy. Senior outside hitter Cassidy Perry said she trusts where her teammates are going to be, knows she can gesture to make sure setters put the ball at the right height and gets signs from the bench to make sure the entire operation goes smoothly.

“We can give each other just quick cues,” Perry said in ASL. “If we’re doing a dig or a set or whatever it may be, we’re able to communicate with each other at the same time. Where hearing teams are able to speak to each other, we can sign.”

Perry remembers an important meeting early in the season about leaving last year in the past, but it was an appearance and silver medal finish at the World Deaf Volleyball Championship in Japan that provided the team's foundation for this success.

"Bonding definitely happened on that trip," Gamble said. “It was kind of proving to ourselves that we can compete at a high level, and this year I feel like we went into the season with a lot more confidence than we had last year. We had a lot more trust with each other. We have so much better chemistry.”

So good that Zarembka feels it has provided Gallaudet's players with a deep connection during a season she doesn't want to end any time soon.

"We’ve got a lot of good memories, a lot of wins and I’ll miss a lot of that forever," Zarembka “I feel like this is truly a one-of-a-kind experience for me, and I’ll definitely miss the team once the season’s over.”