She bows her head and watches a teammate’s hand to the left count to five, cautious not to make a move before the signal. She stands still, waiting – watching for a teammate to move. Seconds pass as hip-hop music bellows from the public address system. The halftime show for the LSU basketball game has just begun, and she starts to count, paying careful attention to her teammates’ moves. All surrounding sounds are mute as she executes each dance step. She sees the roaring crowd in front of her, but just like the music, she cannot hear them. She dances in silence. Tiger Girl Andrea Sonnier is deaf in both ears. If her hearing aid battery dies in the middle of a routine, she depends on the rhythm and the beat – carefully matching each move with its assigned count. Most basketball fans Saturday night in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center probably had no idea of Sonnier’s disability as they watched the Tigers’ game against Arkansas. But being hearing-impaired is not why Sonnier questioned her ability to secure a spot on the team. In fact, she said it was the last thing on her mind. The elementary education sophomore’s interest in dance first blossomed in high school. She tried out for the Lafayette High School dance squad during her freshman year but was not accepted. Sonnier realized she lacked training experience and began taking dance lessons. Two years later, she left tryouts as a member of her high school dance squad. After dancing for her high school team, Sonnier came to the University to pursue her dream of becoming an LSU Tiger Girl. “It wasn’t until I made the dance team in high school that it hit me,” she said. “I was like ‘Whoa, I am going to have work through this,’ – which I have and still am.” Since coming to college, Sonnier said her hearing aid is always on – even when sleeping – because her parents are no longer there to wake her up. She said it is not unusual for her battery to die in the middle of a performance. When that happens, everything becomes mute. “You just see a lot of faces,” she said. “I don’t hear the tennis shoes squeaking on the sidelines. When they are playing the band music, I just have to watch the girls and remember the tempo in my head. It’s a feeling, you just know when to hit something.” While the hearing aid is helpful, she said it only provides her with a buzzing sound that notifies her the music is playing. She said she relies on feeling the music, the vibrations in the floor and constant counting. Sonnier said she can identify the difference between an instrumental piece and its vocal piece. She can hear the words, but cannot make out what is being said or what the singer’s message is. To many people’s surprise, Sonnier owns an iPod. But for every song she downloads she prints out the lyrics. When the skillful lip-reader is not face-to-face with a singer, she studies the lyrics to learn the words. “I can hear people talking in the background, but I can’t make out what they are saying,” she said. “I can hear the music, but I can’t make out the words. I have to look up the lyrics in order to do that. If the beats are really strong, it would be just a little bit easier for me to be on cue with it.” She said the Tiger Girls often watch her to make sure she understands the coach. But she said she does not receive special treatment, and she does not expect any. “How can I improve if someone’s going to feel sorry for me?” she said. “Don’t go soft on me. Only difference between me and the others is that I’m deaf, not dumb. I’m an ordinary human being, and I can take it like an ordinary human being.” She said everybody works together to bring out the best in each other, which she said has made her a better dancer. “They are trying to understand my position,” she said. “They are aware that I miss a lot. If they have to keep repeating it to you, it slows you down.” Life for Sonnier off the dance floor and in the classroom presents its own set of challenges. The average student might sit in the front row to read the chalkboard or avoid trampling over booksacks to the back. Sonnier secures her front row seat to get the most out of the teacher’s voice for lip-reading purposes. “I have to be close to the speaker in order to make out what he or she is saying,” she said. “I also have to be close enough to see that person’s lips, which helps me to understand the words being said. I depend on lip-reading a lot more than I do on my hearing.” The teacher’s gender plays an important role in Sonnier’s ability to learn in the classroom. Because of different vocal frequencies, she said it is more difficult to understand a man’s voice than a woman’s voice. In addition to being unable to hear teachers and students, she said many people often cannot understand her. She said some people inquire where she is from and assume she has a foreign accent. “I just speak the way I hear other people speaking,” she said. “There are certain letters of the alphabet I cannot hear someone pronounce. You talk the way you hear other people talk. If you don’t hear a certain letter, you don’t pronounce it.” Growing up, Sonnier said she was dependent on learning how to spell words to know the pronunciation. “I was the queen of the spelling bee,” she said. Sonnier is not the only one in her family who is deaf. Her brother, grandmother and distant cousins are deaf as well. “Someone else in my family will eventually be deaf,” she said. “Probably my grandkids or my great-grandkids will be deaf.” Sonnier admitted she has moments where she wishes she could hear. When she has a frustrating day, she thinks about how far she has already come and how much further she can go. “Every now and then, I would become hard on myself,” she said. “But because I have a great support system, I kept going. My family, my teachers, my interpreters – they would all push me to go for anything I would be interested in.” Sonnier said she is only just beginning to fulfill her dreams. She plans to go to graduate school in Texas to pursue a degree in deaf education to teach hearing-impaired children. “I’m the kind of person to just pursue whatever it is I wish to do,” she said. “I don’t recognize my deafness as a boundary. Hopefully, I can find the time to continue dancing and doing so for the NBA.” Today, she said she likes to joke with friends to make them feel comfortable around her. And for the naysayers who might have made fun of her disability in elementary school, she said she “just didn’t hear them.”
—-Contact Natalie Messina at [email protected]