Deafness is no barrier to athlete’s pursuits

Kaimi Seminara is without doubt a good athlete, just not, in particular, a master of the links.

“No,” he signed, laughing. “I’m not a good golfer.”

Seminara got his first taste of the game when his father took him to a driving range as a child. He enjoyed whacking the ball for distance but otherwise found the game a bit boring, especially as a spectator.

Many years later Seminara played a full round at a bachelor send-off in Arizona, but with borrowed clubs and no real grasp of the rules. The PGA has yet to extend an invitation.

And yet when former Punahou golf coach and fellow Rochester Institute of Technology alumnus Gerald Isobe asked Seminara to participate in the upcoming 1st Golf Classic, a fundraiser for the Georgia E. Morikawa Center, Seminara didn’t hesitate.

“I like challenges,” Seminara signed. “I’m always up for challenge.”

Seminara, who was born deaf, is also always up to support anything that makes a positive contribution to people in Hawaii who are deaf, deaf and blind, or hard of hearing.

The 1st Golf Classic, which will be held July 13 at the Kaneohe Klipper Golf Course, is the first major fundraiser for GEM, a nonprofit organization established two years ago with the goal of building a community center for people with hearing loss. Among the field will be Isobe; Pono Tokioka, the first deaf golfer to play for the University of Hawaii at Manoa; and Nyle DiMarco, the first deaf winner of “America’s Next Top Model” and “Dancing With the Stars.”

For Seminara, participating in a sporting event to benefit people with hearing loss has special resonance.

As a child, sports were one way for him to make connections with his peers and to demonstrate his capabilities.

With his father serving as an assistant coach and signaling what he would not otherwise be able to hear, Seminara excelled as a youth baseball player. He was also an accomplished all-around soccer player in American Youth Soccer Organization and Hawaii Youth Soccer Association play.

At Pearl City High School he played four years of soccer and spent four years on the track team, for which he ran 100-, 200- and 4×400-meter events and did the long jump and triple jump. He also ran cross-country for two years.

The only problem Seminara faced related to his deafness was his inability to hear the starting gun at races. That was remedied simply by lining up far enough away from the gun to see the smoke that emanated when it was fired.

“I was always a second off,” he signed, again laughing.

As a child he worked with a speech therapist so that he could verbalize responses. In middle school he learned the rudiments of American Sign Language from friends who were also deaf. He took formal ASL classes in high school.

Seminara went on to attend RIT in New York, where he took up computer science. It was in New York, he said, that he experienced a robust and active deaf culture and community. It was also his first time living on his own, a challenge that he embraced.

After graduation Seminara returned to Hawaii, where he found work as a machinist at Naval Facilities Engineering Command Hawaii.

Seminara has remained active on his various fields of play, serving stints as a soccer coach at his high school alma mater.

In 2007 he entered a surfing competition for the deaf in Okinawa. While there, he made the acquaintance of a skilled deaf surfer named Kiyo. The two met up again a couple of years later when the competition rotated to Hawaii. They stayed in touch and eventually married in 2010; their daughter, Anri, was born seven years ago.

Seminara grew up with parents and a younger brother who could hear. Now he and his wife are deaf parents with a daughter who can hear. Seminara is proud that Anri is fluent in English, Japanese, ASL and Japanese Sign Language. When his mother, who does not speak Japanese, wants to talk to Kiyo, it’s Anri who does the translating.

Seminara’s experiences as a father in a mixed-hearing household has only heightened his awareness of the need for a community center for those with hearing loss, a place that promotes the wide diversity of the population — from children who were born deaf to adults who lose their hearing later in life — and celebrates the collective deaf and hard-of-hearing culture.

At next month’s golf tournament, he’ll place his convictions on the tee and hope for the best.

“I want any person who is deaf to get involved in sports,” he signed. “I want them to know that they can do it.”

For more information about the 1st Golf Classic, please visit www.gemcenter.org. The deadline for registration is June 22.

Thanks to Kristine Pagano and Colin Whited for their help in translating this interview.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.