Raven Recca Nidoy (right) and Christian Jay Tacorda’s (left) hearing handicap did not deter them from enjoying sports. These two members of Bardilleranz Calisthenics in Baguio are studying at Baguio School for the Deaf, making them different from other people who took sports as an undertaking.
Both are 18 years of age. Raven is already at his second year while Christian is a fourth year student. Raven is an inborn deaf and Christian had a hearing infection, rendering the loss of his left ear’s natural ability.
Christian was the first to try practicing calisthenics and enticed Raven to do it with him. Now, they absolutely love this body weight exercise. Raven and Christian are both good at freestyles, static holds and repetitions like hand stands, back lever, pull-ups, muscle-ups and push-ups. Not only that, Raven and Christian are sports inclined. They love activities which involves our body like playing basketball, skateboarding, and soccer.
This love for sports totally blended with their philosophy of having a healthy body and enjoying life as an important thing to them. They wanted to have a good physique, aiming for abdominal muscles, biceps, and triceps. Raven said that “learning a free style routine is like learning how to live life. Never give up until you learned how to do the routine and explore more on how to do new routines.”
Like other people who had handicaps, they both suffered bullying, cruelty, abuse, threats and ridicule, intentionally or not, because of their condition. According to Christian, he always read bible and that is where he learned God’s teaching on how to have a self-control, patience, love and forgiving one another that made them strong today.
For them Life is a no pain, no gain cycle. They are hurt by what people are telling them, but they gained strength, courage and determination because of their experiences.
Now, they both learned how to accept and how to live with their condition and enjoy sports like other people with fully functional senses do. Like how we treat sports, we should live our life never give up on reaching our goals, said Raven. “Having that disability is not a hindrance to do what you love”, he continued.
For them who do not have the ability to appreciate a good speech, speaking is not the only way to express one’s self.
They learned to use calisthenics as a way of expressing themselves.
Movements, gestures and doing what they love are how they express their passion.
By: Karen Kieth O. Ponseca, UB Intern