Richardson teen’s ‘Ref for the Deaf’ lets athletes feel officials’
signals
13-year-old’s invention allows athletes to feel signals from referees
Sunday, January 6, 2008
By STACI HUPP / The Dallas Morning News
Celia Beron isn’t known for compassion on the soccer field. The wily
eighth-grader from Richardson has a reputation for steals and blocked
kicks, and she has the trophy collection to prove it.
These days, she’s capturing attention for a major assist to other
athletes, but she didn’t use her legs. She used her heart.
Celia, 13, invented Ref for the Deaf, a special bracelet that
vibrates for deaf players who can’t hear the sound of a referee’s
whistle or starter gun.
With some help from Celia’s father and two graduate students from the
University of Texas at Dallas, a good idea from a skinny girl with
braces has the makings of a great product.
Supporters see a demand from elementary school gymnasiums to the
Special Olympics and beyond.
“The big vision is it would be phenomenal to have this widely used
across all kinds of sports,” said Jonathan Hoak, 29, one of two UTD
graduate students who turned Celia’s idea into a business model.
That plan won the top prize at a UTD contest for new business ideas
in November.
Now, the Berons and their university partners will test the idea in
the real world.
“You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to come up with a good idea,” said
Joe Picken, director of UTD’s Institute for Innovation and
Entrepreneurship, which sponsored the competition. “Most good ideas
come from experience. Celia was involved in youth sports and saw a
problem.”
Uneven playing field
No one tallies how many deaf athletes participate in high school,
college and professional sports. But about 10,000 of them belong to
the USA Deaf Sports Federation, a national athletic association that
hooks up deaf and hearing-impaired Americans with international
competitions.
Special Olympics officials counted an additional 135 deaf and
hearing-impaired athletes in the nonprofit organization’s national
games in 2006.
Celia was at soccer camp four years ago when she noticed that a
teammate’s hearing disability put her on an uneven playing field.
“She kept playing after everyone else stopped,” said Celia, now an
eighth-grader at Richardson North Junior High. “Every time a coach
blew his whistle to stop, we had to wave our arms in her face to get
her to stop.”
The game ended, but Celia’s curiosity stuck. She first thought of Ref
for the Deaf for a school project.
Her concept pairs up a transmitter with a referee’s whistle or
starter gun. When either of them goes off, the transmitter sends a
signal to the receiver: a vibrating bracelet worn by a deaf athlete.
Until now, deaf players have taken their cues mostly from referees,
coaches and other players who can hear — and, in some cases, try to
dupe their hearing-impaired competition.
Kevin Cook has seen the struggle firsthand. The former WNBA coach,
who oversees an all-deaf women’s basketball team at Gallaudet
University in Washington, D.C., described a pivotal moment in a
recent game.
“My player thought that a foul had been called, and so she stopped
play. Play continued and there was a score” for the other team, Mr.
Cook said.
Ref for the Deaf could be the difference between a win or a loss for
his team, which is in a competitive Division III conference.
“As alert as my team is, I think something like this would be very
valuable to them,” he said.
Celia’s idea swept the Richardson school district’s annual invention
contest when she was in fourth grade.
Her father, Kurt, a UTD economics and public policy professor, saw
bigger potential and started poking around on the Internet.
“Seeing these anecdotal stories around the world about athletes who
had problems because of their hearing in competitive sports, it
surprised me that this wasn’t already out there,” Dr. Beron said. “I
thought that it did have some commercial appeal.”
Patented
Celia’s father laid the groundwork for a patent, which Ref for the
Deaf earned last February.
From there, Dr. Beron turned to a management professor at UTD who
hooked him up with Mr. Hoak and another graduate student, Timothy
Gutschlag.
“I wasn’t expecting it to get this big,” Celia said. “It’s cool.”
It might have been easy to cut a little girl out of a business
competition, but the UTD students didn’t.
Celia left school for a day this fall to help sell her idea to
judges, just as participants twice her age did.
Celia and the UTD students also split their $10,000 in prize money
three ways.
“We’ve always given her complete and total credit for everything —
it’s her deal,” Mr. Hoak said.
Next, Celia’s father and the UTD students will study their market
options for Ref for the Deaf and start a business together.
Celia, meanwhile, has more important things to think about:
practicing the trombone, getting through junior high and — most
important — soccer.
REF FOR THE DEAF
Inventor: Celia Beron, 13, of Richardson
The concept: An alert system that enables deaf and hearing-impaired
people to participate in athletics and other activities safely and
more efficiently. The patented device provides vibration or lights
that allow athletes to pick up referee whistles, starter guns or
other cues normally communicated through sound.
The business plan: Two graduate students from the University of Texas
at Dallas teamed up with Celia Beron and her father, Kurt, to develop
a business model. The four will work on a market study and then
launch a business together.
Link:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/010708dnmetdeafidea.26769ae.html
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