Former Deaf Bronco Kenny Walker Uses Interpreter To Teach Track–via CBS Denver

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (CBS4) – Adversity is common in sports – a team loses a game or a player gets hurt and they have to bounce back. One Denver native was dealing with adversity long before he hit the football field, but it never slowed him up or stopped him from playing at the game’s highest level.

Kenny Walker, now an assistant coach with the Highlands Ranch track team, was a two-year starter for the University of Nebraska football team in the late 1980s. Even though he’s a Denver native, he picked the Cornhuskers because they had what most schools didn’t — a program for the deaf.

“They have very good deaf access there, and it was back in the 1980s, and it wasn’t an easy step for me,” Walker said. “You know most (schools) don’t have interpreters and they were willing to provide me with one.”

Walker has been profoundly deaf since age 2. He lost his hearing when he contracted spinal meningitis. Since then he’s only been able to hear noises over 110 decibels. When he played his final home game at Nebraska in 1990 against Colorado, Cornhusker fans made sure Walker knew he was appreciated — not by trying to cheer loudly — but rather by using the sing language gesture for cheering.

“I didn’t realize how supportive Nebraska was. I didn’t know how big the people were supporting me,” he said. “It was very special. To have that, deaf and hard of hearing, knowing we could succeed, it’s not easy for me, but I did succeed.”

In 1991 the Denver Broncos drafted Walker in the eighth round and he would end up playing two seasons for Denver before being released prior to the 1993 season. He bounced around the country for the next 18 years, and then two years ago he moved home to Denver looking for a job.

“We had a coach that left last year and I posted the position and he jumped right on it,” Highlands Ranch head track coach John Padjen said.

To read more of this article courtesy of CBS Denver, click the link below.

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/03/25/former-deaf-bronco-kenny-walker-uses-interpreter-to-teach-track/