Lynden senior Jesse Stewart has to worry about one thing most athletes don’t have to: hearing.
Stewart, 18, a starting defensive lineman who helped the Lions advance to the state quarterfinals this season, was born 100% deaf in both ears.
He wears cochlear implants, an electronic device that allows deaf people to hear again. If they shift and become disconnected during a game, Stewart is temporarily detached from sounds — until he can get to a sideline and reconnect them.
Despite obstacles on the field and in a classroom, Stewart doesn’t see being deaf as a barrier, rather it makes him unique from most of his peers.
From the ground up
Stewart, whose parents both can hear, was able to get implants at a very young age — in his right ear when he was a year old, and in his left ear when he was 3 years old.
He still has trouble hearing at times. It forces him to have more focus and concentration than a person who is not deaf.
One of his biggest challenges growing up was in a classroom setting.
“Even though I can hear, the (implants) are not perfect,” Stewart said. “At times, it makes it difficult to hear what a teacher is saying. That was one of the big struggles I had as a kid.”
He eventually found an outlet in sports. He joined flag football in third grade, plays basketball recreationally and plans to run track this spring.
On the gridiron
Stewart was not blessed with the prototypical football build. He spent his first three years of high school as a safety.
Lynden varsity football coach Blake VanDalen approached him in the offseason, summer 2023, and told him there was an opening for a starter on the defensive line.
Stewart accepted the challenge and put on 30 pounds of muscle, going from 175 pounds at the end of his junior year to the 205 pounds he is now.
“That’s an impressive transition,” VanDalen said. “He’s an extremely hard worker and extremely intelligent.”
The battle within the battle
One of the first obstacles Stewart faces on a football field is just finding a helmet that pairs well with his implants.
Cochlear implants require a magnetic receiver implant under the skin, and a transmitter with another magnet connected to it on the outside of the ear to hold it in place. When his football helmet shifts, it can pull the magnet off.
“Even when you find a helmet that works, sometimes they’ll slip off under the helmet and then you’re playing deaf on the field,” Stewart said. “You can’t really take off your helmet. You just have to keep going.”
This happened at least once or twice every game.
He had one of two options: Take himself out of the game to readjust the implants, or visually interpret play calls on the fly.
Stewart said he could go four of five plays in a row not being able to hear anything.
One of Lynden’s coaches signals a play to the linebackers, who then verbally call out the play to the rest of the players on the field. If Stewart’s implant was off, he had to try and read the linebackers’ lips through their helmet. Sometimes, he tried to catch the signal from the sideline, even though he should already have been in a three-point stance at that point.
“You don’t want to take yourself off the field, especially when you’ve worked really hard to get on the field and get playing time,” Stewart said.
Racking up the accolades
Stewart finished the 2023 season with 31.5 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss and a forced fumble, according to Whatcom Preps. It would earn him all-league honorable mention honors, as well as No. 98 on Whatcom Preps’ Top 100 Players of 2023 list.
At the end of the season, VanDalen had the entire Lynden football team line up. He asked Stewart how big he was as a freshman. Stewart called out: “5-foot-8, 135 pounds.” VanDalen then asked a freshman to come up and stand next to Jesse.
“I said, ‘If you come to the weight room every day, you can look just like Jesse,’” VanDalen said. “‘This is hard work. He was not born this size. He got everything out of his body.’”
For the future
On Nov. 15, Gallaudet University, a Washington D.C. institution for deaf and hard of hearing students, contacted Stewart to come visit for a chance to play football.
By then, it was too late. Stewart had already applied to MIT and Gonzaga University, where he plans to pursue an engineering degree.
“Just from a young age, I’ve enjoyed working with my hands,” Stewart said. “And I like the amount of problem-solving that goes into engineering. I like figuring out how to make things work. That whole process is very appealing to me.”
VanDalen said if he polled the football team on who would be the most successful in life, “Jesse would have won that vote.”
No barricades
Thanks to his parents, Stewart sees being deaf as something that makes him unique and different, not hindered.
“My parents have been the best supporters I could have,” Stewart said. “They keep me from seeing it as a challenge, and instead see it as an opportunity.
“There are some benefits to being deaf; you can have selective hearing.”
It also helped that his coaches growing up never treated him differently than the other kids, or gave him a special opportunity because of his situation.
“They treated me as an equal,” Stewart said. “I think that’s one of the greatest that helped me not get down on myself and not view it as a challenge.”
If there is one thing Stewart wishes people knew, it’s to not treat or talk to deaf people any differently than they would anyone else.
“I view it as one of the coolest things that makes me different,” Stewart said. “This makes me different in a cool way. My friends always ask me, ‘What’s it like being deaf?’ I think it’s just cool being able to speak to that — and give people a perspective on what it’s like.”
