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New Zealand Sign Language must be given official recognition as a language or it will die, Deaf Association President Jennifer Brain says.

Twenty-three of the 39 residential care staff at van Asch College were made redundant yesterday as a result of Government funding cuts last year.

Susie Ovens, born 97% deaf, uses mime as one of the many methods to relate to the hearing world. She is also a member of the “Deaf Sign Singers”, a group of 11 deaf people who perform sign language to music.

Noel Coventry is a 22-year-old deaf athlete and the sole New Zealand representative going to the Deaf Olympics in Yugoslavia. Club officials would drop a handkerchief for him to sight as a sign that the starting gun had been fired.

Four New Zealand deaf athletes are favoured to win medals in swimming, cycling, and badminton. The 112-strong New Zealand team will compete in 11 of the 12 sports.

The combined Wellington-Manawatu Central Districts team and the first national deaf cricket tournament in Upper Hutt this week thrashed Canterbury by nine wickets in the final, passing its total of 98 after only 13 of the allocated 50 overs.

The New Zealand cricket team beat Australia at the Petone Recreation Ground. You would be forgiven for not knowing the match was on. Media coverage, or rather the lack of it, is a major problem for disabled sport.

When Alan Ovens yells at his sister Susie on the basketball court, she never listens. Quite simply, she can't. Susie Ovens is the captain of the New Zealand women's deaf basketball team.

Most of these taking part in the sports convention last weekend live in a silvent world constantly. Yet no observer could have mistaken the enjoyment the spectators at the badminton expressed in their conversation, using signs and movements of their arms, hands and lips.

After having the rug pulled from under them four years ago, the New Zealand deaf cricket team heads to India today for the World Cup.

– and Val Jillings and her deaf family prove it! This is Deaf Awareness Week – so the Quota Club of Auckland will hold week-long displays, video films and discussions in the city’s Downtown Walkway and Centrecourt.

Basketball referees Peter Murray and Peter Downie are quite used to being accused of being blind. This they ignore. Accusations of deafness are a different matter.

The Games will be about the same size as the 1974 sporting extravaganza in Christchurch, the Commonwealth Games. Yet it has been orchestrated on a budget of $700,000 – about one-third of the cost of the opening ceremony planned for the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland.

People who can hear as well as see 'Reasonable Doubts' (TV3, 9.50pm Saturdays) might be surprised to learn that Deaf New Zealanders can understand deaf lawyer Tessa Kaufman’s sign language little better than they can. ASL, used by Deaf actor Marlee Matlin, is a foreign language here. My Deaf friends give it the thumbs up. But the failure of television in New Zealand to provide anything in NZSL is described as “a running sore” by Hilary McCormack.

The starting equipment to be used at the Queen Elizabeth II complex is far more sophisticated. It uses a traffic-light type devised by a Christchurch man, Mr Ted Gilliver.

A field officer for the deaf, Mr David Chilwell, a former president of the Christchurch Deaf Club, has been appointed in Christchurch as a result of a grant from the Lottery Funds Board.