Sunday, July 29, 2012

Deaf Olympian

One of the players on the US Olympic team is deaf. David Smith uses hearing aids to help with his 80-90% hearing loss. The six foot seven player was a star on the UC Irvine volley team that won the 2007 national championship and this is the first time he'll compete in the Olympics. The team opens play today (Sunday) against Serbia - but Smith wasn't originally on the May roster for the U.S. team, so his presence is surprise. His team is ranked 5th and just won a silver medal in the World League. Smith played professionally last year in France and graduated from UC Irvine with an engineering degree.