It will take more than severe hearing loss to slow down—or quiet—Colleen Sullivan.
By Matt Jennings
Photograph by Dennis Curran
The sounds of a ball field are unmistakable, and never more so than when a team stands on the cusp of breaking a game wide open. Dugout chatter amps up several notches, base runners pepper hitters with words of encouragement, while fans add harmony to the impromptu performance.
On a chilly, overcast early May afternoon, this wall of sound engulfs the Middlebury softball diamond as the home team appears to be a swing or two away from breaking open a 2–1 game against Lyndon State. It's the home half of the third inning, and the bases are full of Panthers. With Ellen Sargent '07 at the plate, Colleen Sullivan '07 looms in the on-deck circle, a few paces from the home dugout.
Sullivan has a slugger's stance—her practice swings are vicious rips—and on each pitch to Sargent, Sullivan's deep-blue eyes hone in on the pitcher, attempting to pick up any flaw in the delivery.
Sargent hits a smash to the third baseman, who fields the grounder and fires a dart to the catcher. But the throw is mishandled, a run scores, the bases remain loaded, and Sullivan strides to the plate.
A part-time starter in right field as a freshman, Sullivan seized the starting job with a red-hot, 10-game spring trip to Florida, to open her sophomore season. She returned to Vermont with a team-leading .321 average (including a pair of game-winning hits), and in her fourth game back smashed a home run against Castleton. Now, with the bases loaded and a two-run lead, she hopes to put the game out of reach.
She digs into the batter's box and awaits the first pitch. A chorus of "Here we go, Sully," and "Big stick, Sully" emanates from the Panther dugout, and Sullivan takes a big hack at the first pitch.
Pop up to the shortstop.
Sullivan's halfway to first when the ball is caught, and as she makes a sharp right turn toward the dugout, she allows a slight grimace to crease her face. But then, surprisingly, she breaks into a wide smile, shrugs her shoulders, and bellows some words of encouragement for the next batter.
"Colleen is the most enthusiastic, energetic person I've met," centerfielder Katelyn Cannella '08 would say later. "She is very serious about anything she takes on, but she always keeps things in perspective." When it comes to softball, Cannella adds, Sullivan understands that her role as a motivator is as important as her offensive production or defensive prowess. Asked to describe her friend and teammate, Cannella smiles and says, "She's the one who's always smiling. She makes her presence known; makes other people laugh." Cannella rattles off a number of other adjectives (selfless, outgoing, wacky) to describe Sullivan, but what she doesn't mention speaks volumes about how Sullivan is perceived.
Colleen Sullivan is deaf. She was born with "severe and profound hearing loss," and doctors told her parents that their child would never speak. It was an opinion they didn't accept. "My parents were determined that my hearing loss would not prevent me from doing anything," Sullivan says, "and I'm thankful for that every day."
When she was two, Sullivan was enrolled in the Beverly School for the Deaf, in suburban Boston, where she learned to sign and read lips; by the age of three she was verbal. She began attending public school kindergarten in nearby Concord, and by the third grade she was fully mainstreamed into regular classes. She wears hearing aids and reads lips (she claims to have forgotten how to sign), and her speech is clear. After spending a few minutes with her, you forget that she has any hearing loss.
"When I got to Middlebury and learned that Colleen was deaf, I was nervous about bringing the subject up," Cannella says. "But a huge part of playing the outfield is communicating."
Outfielders chatter all the time—about positioning, about the batter's strengths—but at no time is communication more important than when a fly ball is hit to the outfield, and fielders must decide who will make the play. All eyes are glued to the ball, and players rely on verbal cues to determine who will make the catch; serious injuries occur when players miscommunicate and collide.
Sullivan broached the subject on the first day of practice. "If you want to claim a fly ball, just yell. Otherwise I'll assume the ball is mine," she told Cannella. (The centerfielder had to remind herself not to yell, "You got it," to Sullivan if she wanted her to make the play, because with her eyes on the ball, Sullivan would just hear noise and assume Cannella was calling for the ball.) After a few practices, the teammates were playing the outfield as if they were choreographed. "We've never had any trouble," Cannella says. "On other teams, I've had more problems with people who could hear fine."
Though she's comfortable talking about her hearing loss now (she refuses to call it a handicap or disability), there was a time when Sullivan was reluctant to discuss the subject. She says being at Middlebury, a place where she feels like everyone has accepted her, has helped her in that regard. Yet, while she's confident and outgoing, she's far from brash. On more than one occasion, she comments that she doesn't deserve to be the subject of a magazine article, and she professes amazement that her teammates put up with her sense of humor, which she admits is on the level of a ten-year-old.
For all her quirks and self-effacement, Sullivan is a natural athlete. Her first swing as a young tee-ball player resulted in a smash to the outfield (a precursor of things to come, though she insists that nothing has come easily to her), and since arriving at Middlebury she's become a standout rugby player. Her softball coach, Angie Totaro, says that Sullivan is a strong fielder with a rocket for an arm, but more important, "She's our catalyst. She always seems to be 'on,' and everyone feeds off her energy."
During a late-season doubleheader with Green Mountain College, Sullivan didn't get to the field until the fifth inning of the first game (she had an afternoon class that day). What had been a dormant dugout came alive upon her arrival—after eking out a 1–0 win in the first game, the Panthers trounced Green Mountain, 18–0, in the nightcap. The wall of sound was in full effect, and Sullivan was right in the center. There she was at the edge of the dugout, exhorting her teammates at the plate. There she was in the outfield, huddling with the other outfielders leading a cheer at the top of each inning. And there she was between innings, in the middle of the team huddle, the loudest to yell "Go MIDD" before the team ran onto the field.
"I always feel like a Power Ranger when we do that," she exclaims to no one in particular. "You are a Power Ranger, Colleen," an assistant coach replies. At which point Sullivan strikes a brief action-figure pose—one leg lunging in
front of the other and an arm extended above her head, like the Statue of Liberty—before sprinting to her position.