Tamika Catchings' Gold Standard

This August I’ll be in China’s Olympic basketball arena, wearing a red, white and blue Team USA uniform, proudly representing my country in the 2008 Olympics. I’m the starting forward. I’ve played in prestigious games before. I’ve helped my team, the Indianapolis Fever, to the WNBA playoffs, and appeared in WNBA All-Star Games. But I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere in the sport if it weren’t for what my father taught me. 

Not just about basketball—my dad, Harvey Catchings, played 11 seasons in the NBA—but about an attitude you bring to life.

You see, I was born hearing impaired (though not deaf). At three I was taken to an audiologist and fitted with a pair of big, clunky hearing aids the size of marshmallows. I hated them. Hated the way they looked and especially hated the way kids teased me about them. School was torture. “Don’t worry about what other children say,” my mom told me. “We all have difficult things to go through. This will make you strong.”

But it didn’t. It made me feel isolated. I didn’t have a lot of friends to begin with because I was too timid to talk. I mean, I knew I sounded funny. I struggled with the sh and ch sounds. Once, the teacher asked me what four plus two equaled. I said, “Ssssix.” All the kids around me snickered. My face turned red and tears sprang to my eyes. I won’t say anything at all, I told myself. I would never ever raise my hand again, never volunteer for anything.

My one true friend was my sister Tauja. She waited for me at the end of school to walk home together and always had a way of calming me down. We always walked past a field with weeds and bushes.

Someday—I told myself—I’d take off those big ugly hearing aids and throw them far across that field so that no one would ever be able to find them again. Then I’d be free. I’d be like all the other kids. No one could pick me out as being any different. I’d be normal.

One day in second grade the speech therapist called me out of class. I felt all eyes following me. The boy next to me tittered. I was never so humiliated.

Why, I asked the Lord, can’t I be like everyone else?

That afternoon when Tauja and I were walking home, I stopped at the field of brown weeds and brush. This time I’d really do it. I let Tauja go ahead, then quickly, before she could stop me, I yanked off my hearing aids, grabbed them in my right hand and flung them as far as I could throw.

Tauja turned around and looked at me in horror. “Why did you do that?” she asked.

“Don’t know.” I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk about it.

“Mom and Dad are going to be really mad,” she said. “You’re going to be in really big trouble.” I was afraid of that too, but it couldn’t be worse than being teased and laughed at.

I ran almost all the way home, the wind blowing around my ears, the world curiously silent. I almost dared my parents to notice if there was anything different about me. Could they tell what I was missing?

You bet they could. Mom was furious. “Those hearing aids cost a lot of money, Tamika,” she said. “They were made special for you. We can’t just go to the store and buy another pair.” She marched me back to the field and made me look for them. But they were lost.

The hearing aids that had felt so huge on my head were too tiny to be found in that brown field. No way could I see them in the leaves and dried twigs. I kicked at the ground. Nothing. Hearing aids were expensive. It wouldn’t be cheap for me to get a new set, and maybe they’d be bigger and uglier than the ones I’d thrown away. What had I done? God, I prayed, help me out of this mess!

Mom and I walked home in silence. “Wait till your father finds out,” she said.

He and Mom talked for a long time, then Dad came to my bedroom. His look was stern. Now, I’m going to get it, I thought. I’d done something that was really bad and was going to be punished. 

He sat down next to me on my bed. “Tamika,” he said in a strong voice, “you have made a choice. A big choice. Now you’re going to have to live with it.”

For a moment I didn’t understand what he meant. How was I going to have to live with this? “You don’t want to have hearing aids so you won’t have them. You have to take charge of your life without them.”

Take charge of your life. That was how Dad put it. I didn’t want to wear hearing aids so now I would have to take responsibility for that choice. And I did.

You know what? I discovered that I was pretty good at lip reading.

If I watched the teacher closely I could follow what she was saying. Easily. If she spoke facing the blackboard, I would ask her later what I had missed. As for the other kids, without an overt reminder of my hearing deficit, they didn’t tease me so much. We moved to a new town and I started a new school. I didn’t really feel so different at all.

The other thing that happened around this time was that I discovered basketball. First, I played at home with my father and my older brother, Kenyon. I loved it. Not only that, but I was good at it.

Pretty soon basketball was all I thought about. I practiced constantly. Soon I was better than all of the girls in junior high and most of the boys too. Nobody even cared about my hearing. When you hit three pointers regularly during games, no one minds if you hear real well.

For so many years I had prayed to be like everybody else, but when I played basketball I realized that God had done me one better. He had made me special.

I feel fortunate to bring that God-given gift to the Olympics, but as Dad would say, it’s something I’ve had to take charge of. I plan to do my very best in Beijing. And when the games are over, I’ll return to America and take my message to hearing-impaired kids, as I always do.

I tell them how blessed they are and try to show them what they can do with their lives. Of course, I wouldn’t encourage any of them to throw away a pair of good hearing aids—today’s products are so much better than what I had—but wonderful things will happen when they take charge of their future.

Every one of them is meant for something special. Something great.