DeBerry connects deaf community to UConn women’s basketball team
The UConn women’s basketball team had boarded its bus, about to leave for the airport in Minneapolis on Nov. 19, when Amari DeBerry saw a couple of fans communicating in sign language.
“I just saw their hands moving,” DeBerry said. “I made sure I got off the bus and I introduced myself, and they were like, ‘Wait, you sign?’
“It was just cool to be able to connect with them when they hadn’t been able to do that before. They said, ‘Wow, this is amazing, you’re signing great,’ and I always get nervous in case I mess something up.”
DeBerry, a reserve forward, has kept in touch with them via social media, as she has with others with whom she has engaged through the lines of communication she can open.
A 6-foot-6 junior from Williamsville, N.Y., DeBerry is a communications major at UConn, minoring in American Sign Language, developing a skill she began to pick up, without realizing it, when she was about 5 years old. She was at her sister’s softball games one summer and one player’s mother was an interpreter at a local church. She taught Amari some basic signing.
“I didn’t pick it up until I got to college, and I was like, ‘How do I know these things?’ ” DeBerry said. “And I remembered, back when I was 5 I was taught the basics. It evolved after I got here.
“Originally it was my major, but with the planning of everything it had to become my minor, ASL with a focus on interpretation. It’s something that kind of came naturally because I learned so young.”
In most of her ASL classes there is no speaking. It’s all sign language. When students from the American School for the
Deaf in West Hartford came to UConn’s game against Providence on Jan. 10 and a group interpreted the national anthem, DeBerry was well prepared.
The day before, with a look of pure joy on her face, DeBerry made a video showing a few signs appropriate for a basketball game, and another ticking off the Huskies’ lineup.
“In that community Amari has really made a big (impact) with combining sports and sign language,” teammate Aaliyah Edwards said, “trying to emphasize the importance of it.
“She’s really passionate about it, she tries to teach each and every one of us some sign. … It’s just a different side to what, as student-athletes, we can accomplish and how impactful we can be off the court, and to bring a bigger audience to women’s basketball as well.”
DeBerry doesn’t have a set post-college or post-basketball plan for the skills she is mastering. She just wants to make the world a more inclusive place for those who may not feel included.
“Inclusivity,” she said. “Just to be an advocate for the community.
“I love being able to teach my teammates a couple of signs for when my professors stop in, or when we meet any fans who happen to be deaf. It’s just so nice to see how excited everyone gets, to just want to learn and try to invest in being involved with the communication.”
As her abilities have become known, DeBerry meets fans everywhere UConn goes, near the bus or the entrances and exits to the arenas. For them, she has become the connection to the Huskies. During the volleyball season a group from ASD came to watch a game and met DeBerry, who was walking back to her dorm. As usual, she stopped to engage in conversation.
“It warms my heart to see kids who look up to Paige (Bueckers) and Aaliyah,” DeBerry said. “They want to ask them for an autograph, but they can’t tell them, communicate directly with them, all the stuff they want to say.
“We were at the WNBA finals with the Sun, and there was a girl who came up, wanted an autograph for her mom. ‘I was like, ‘Hi, my name’s Amari, I can sign. Where do you go to school?’ … and we started talking and I follow her on Instagram too.”
DeBerry, who worked to recover from offseason back surgery, is playing 4.9 minutes per game for the eighth-ranked Huskies, shooting 42.1% from the floor, with eight points and five rebounds in the win over DePaul on Jan. 20. Among her teammates, Bueckers is able to introduce herself with sign language, and redshirt freshman Jana El Alfy has picked up the most in just a couple of weeks.
So, what does it take to be good at it?
“You just have to be a people person,” DeBerry said. “Something about the deaf community — everybody loves to chit-chat, everyone loves to catch up and talk, get to know each other, find out why you wanted to sign, who you learned from. Just wanting to connect with people, which I love to do.”
UConn football retooling “front office”
Jim Mora is making some adjustments in his staffing for UConn football.
The program named Eddie Hernon the general manager, a title under which he will oversee recruiting operations with a focus on the transfer portal. A separate position, director of player personnel, is posted, open until Jan. 29. That job will center on football talent and help pick recruiting targets for the GM to develop the process.
The idea is to organize the staff more along the lines of other FBS programs in the current climate.
There will be some newcomers among analysts, as there is always turnover in that area as young staffers move elsewhere to assistant coaching positions.
Mora reportedly said in a recent webinar he is considering naming a defensive coordinator, to fill a title that’s been open, a job done collectively the past two seasons. Nothing’s been posted yet.
Sunday short takes
Hana Muhl, Nika’s younger sister, has continued to flourish since her Ball State team played at UConn Dec. 6., shooting 52.6% from the field, 41.2% on 3s.
One challenge of covering the top-ranked UConn men on deadline is to fight brainwork and avoid referring to Tristen Newton or Cam Spencer as “Cam Newton.” … Great, now it’s in my head.
Whalers great Mike Liut was inducted into the St. Louis Blues Hall of Fame this past week. Emile “The Cat” Francis acquired Liut, now in the Connecticut hockey Hall of
Fame, in one of his best moves as Hartford’s GM.
There’s a book coming out in May, “The Early Days of ESPN: 300 Daydreams and Nightmares” by Peter Fox, the network’s founding executive producer, detailing the birth of what grew so big and far beyond the wildest dreams of the Connecticut folks who conceived it in 1978. Sounds like it’s going to be a fun read for those fascinated with the industry.
Two of the new baseball Hall of Famers made short, spectacular stops in Connecticut. Joe Mauer played 73 games for the New Britain Rock Cats in 2003, hitting .341 with a .400 OBP, 17 doubles, four homers and 41 RBIs. Todd Helton played 93 games for the New Haven Ravens, then the Rockies’ Double A affiliate, in 1996, hitting .332 with 24 doubles, seven homers and 51 RBIs.
CC Sabathia and Ichiro Suzuki should be first-ballot favorites in next year’s Hall of Fame voting. Here’s hoping Andruw Jones, an elite center fielder with 434 homers in a relatively short career, gets more traction.
Hartford Athletic will announce its promotional schedule and sale of single game tickets by the middle of this week.
In case you’ve lost count, the Edmonton Oilers have won 15 in a row — going into Saturday’s game versus Nashville — and are 25-6 since hiring Kris Knoblauch off the Wolf Pack bench to be their head coach.
If Bill Belichick doesn’t get one of the many head coaching spots that were open, wouldn’t it be something if he is not destined to end up with the job he should have gotten more than 30 years ago. Just an errant thought.
Last word
Giants fans may remember him as one of the intrepid beat writers back in the day, as author of a terrific book on Vince Lombardi’s and Tom Landy’s time as Giants assistant coaches or as the feisty little writer who cursed out Lawrence Taylor and nearly got a free tonsillectomy as a result.
I remember Ernie Palladino as one of the best friends a guy could ever have, the guy who took me under his wing on my first major beat assignment in 1992. He was just 63, a new grandad, when we lost him in 2018 after waging war against cancer for 10 years, and he is the one I choose to remember and honor for Sunday’s Coaches Vs. Cancer program at the UConn men’s basketball game.
Cancer, as we all know, stinks.