ANAHEIM – Esperanza senior Anthony Robles can’t hear the referee’s whistle.
But the lineman knows when to stop.
“I don’t want to give away my secret,” he said, “but I know when to stop when everyone stops moving. If I’m on offense and a linebacker is still moving, I’m going to keep trying to block him.”
His strategy worked well. In the fall, he will play football in college.
Robles, 18, is what’s called profoundly deaf, which means he has lost close to all of his hearing. He can hear sounds faintly, but he can’t make out words.
The cause is uncertain, but Robles was given antibiotics as a newborn to treat a respiratory virus.
“We were not sure if he was going to make it,” said his mother, Christi Bowins. “He was given a lot of medication at the time … and once he was 3, doctors diagnosed him with hearing loss.
“We don’t know if it was from the medication or if he’s carrying a gene.”
Robles received hearing aids a year later. He gradually taught himself to read lips.
“As a child, you don’t care that you got something in your ear that’s helping you hear,” he said. “I was just being a kid. As I got older, I was more curious. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know the answer.”
In middle school, Robles noticed a change in the way his classmates and teachers treated him. They became more judgmental and unwelcoming, he said.
Robles internalized his anger, and it boiled inside of him. He was ornery and began hanging out with the wrong group of friends. He frequently got in trouble at school.
“I was going down a bad path,” he said.
“We told him there was always going to be a lot of ignorant people judging you,” Bowins said. “And that it was up to him to prove them wrong.”
Robles never wanted to attend Esperanza. He didn’t know a single student.
He remembers telling himself to fight someone on the first day of school to get kicked out. He joined the school’s football team that fall, and his perspective on high school changed entirely.
“I wasn’t an angry person, but I wasn’t a normal person,” Robles said. “That’s why I like football – it helps me cope with my hearing loss. It makes everything easier.
“I feel normal being on the field with other guys. We’re all wearing the same uniforms; we’re all brothers.”
His freshman year, Robles weighed 370 pounds.
He had the size of an offensive lineman, and that’s where he played. Robles wanted to play defense, though: It was easier for him to play given his disability, not having to worry about the snap count, and Robles liked roughing people up.
His footwork needed work, though, as did his agility and stamina. But the biggest detriment to Robles playing defense was his weight.
So he dropped 40 pounds the summer before his sophomore year, and 30 more by his junior year.
In 2012, Robles started on the defensive line at close to 300 pounds.
“For me, football was a way to change my ways, and that’s what I did,” he said.
By the end of his junior season, Robles realized he had the potential to play in college.
That winter, he stumbled across Gallaudet University, a school in Washington, D.C., for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
Then-Esperanza coach Bill Pendleton arranged a formal introduction between Robles and Gallaudet football coach Chuck Goldstein, and Robles fell in love with the idea of attending the university.
“I go to a mainstream high school where I have to be adapted to hearing people,” Robles said. “I wanted to be finally accepted into a deaf culture and environment, and be able to get a college education at my level, my pace and my needs.”
At 6-foot-2, Robles weighed 280 pounds last football season. He started on the offensive and defensive line for Esperanza.
Robles separated his shoulder three games into the season, but delayed surgery until after the season. He returned a month after injuring his shoulder and played in Esperanza’s final three games.
His teammates voted him the most inspirational player.
“As a former player, you know what it’s like to play in pain,” said Esperanza coach Gary Bowers. “And he played … in excruciating pain. He played with one arm, and what he was able to do is an inspiration to everyone else.
“If he could go out and do that … his teammates figured they could do it, too.”
Robles took part in Esperanza’s National Signing Day celebration on Feb. 5. He was one of 13 student-athletes at the school to commit to play college athletics. (Because Gallaudet is a Division III school, it doesn’t award athletic scholarships.)
“It’s kind of breathtaking knowing that I’m doing something to set an example for my brothers,” said Robles, the eldest of three boys. “I just want to set an example for my younger brothers to do better than me.”
Robles will depart for Gallaudet, where incoming students are taught sign language, in July.
“When people talk about Gallaudet, they talk about it being the best experience of their life,” he said. “I’ve never had that best-experience-of-my-life yet, where I can be accepted for who I am.”
Contact the writer: bwhitehead@ocregister.com
