City of Basketball Love

By Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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ABINGTON — What Cam Lexow is doing this year is remarkable in plenty of ways.

It’d be one thing if the Abington graduate had simply changed colleges to start grad school. It’d be another thing if Lexow had just changed sports for her fifth season of eligibility. It’d be another thing entirely if she were merely going from a place where speaking and hearing were normal to one where it makes her an outlier.

All of that is a part of what Lexow is doing this year. She is in her first year of the graduate program at Gallaudet University, a federally chartered institution for the deaf and hard of hearing, playing basketball for the first time since senior year of high school after her first act as a soccer player at the University of Virginia. She’s doing all of it using a language she only started learning three years ago.

For most, it would be an impossible scenario.

Most people aren’t Cam Lexow.

“It is everything I hoped it would be and more, if I’m being completely honest,” Lexow said after the schedule brought her home Wednesday night, Gallaudet downing Penn State-Abington on the road 68-56. “When I first came, I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew it’d be a lot of sign language and I’d be one of the people who wasn’t the best at sign language because almost everyone there is a native signer.”

Lexow, who graduated from Abington in 2019 after playing four years of varsity for the Ghosts in soccer and basketball, is completely hearing-abled. She is the only player on the Bison roster who can say that, so all communication with her teammates is done through American Sign Language (ASL).

She’d never used ASL prior to her sophomore year at UVA, where an introductory class in the language would change her trajectory. Majoring in psychology, she knew she wanted to continue her studies in a way that would benefit others and having an opportunity to become ingrained in the deaf community showed her the path she should take.

Less than 10 percent of all students at Gallaudet are hearing-abled and the majority of them are in the graduate program. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision to go through the stringent applications process for the university, which is located in Washington, D.C. and with guidance from her mentors in the ASL program at Virginia, Lexow knew what it would entail.

“It’s definitely a new energy,” Lexow said. “I was so excited to be here. Even when I was still at Virginia and first heard about Gallaudet then decided I really wanted to go there, I’ve been working toward it.”

She’d also been an athlete all her life and wanted to continue that as well at her next stop. The Gatorade PA State Player of the Year in soccer as a senior at Abington, Lexow appeared in 48 matches over three seasons with the Cavaliers but going from Division I to Division III in soccer didn’t quite have the pull. Alongside that, she had started to really miss basketball.

The last time she suited up in a basketball uniform was March 15, 2019 in a PIAA quarterfinal loss that not only effectively ended her high school playing days but her basketball career.

That almost changed in the winter of 2020-21. With UVA’s women’s team decimated by injuries and COVID-19, Lexow was close to walking on and was about to start basketball training when the season was ultimately canceled.

Lexow had grown up playing hoops with her dad Stan and younger brother Bryce, so when she started looking into Gallaudet, she also took a look at the basketball program. Bison coach Stephanie Stevens, in her 10th year leading the program, was naturally interested in adding a Division I level athlete to her roster.

It didn’t take long for Stevens to realize she’d potentially be adding more than just an athletic presence with Cam Lexow.

“Surprise? There’s no surprise,” Stevens said. “I was fortunate to get to know her through the year we’d started connecting and just her aura about her, she’s very special.

“She is a special person who loves to play ball but when she’s not playing ball, she’s just a great human being. It’s so welcoming and refreshing to get another player, especially with the Division I experience even if it was in soccer, as part of our team and they’ve been so great with Cam, they just all mesh.”

Wednesday, Lexow had 16 points, four rebounds, a team-high six assists, a steal, a block and several deflections for the Bison. She’s played and started all 15 games for the 9-6 Bison and averages a team-high 35.5 minutes per game, including going all 40 against PSU-Abington and she’s second on the team in scoring at 13.7 ppg.

Her mom Stacy was with her dad, brother, grandmom and a few of her brother’s friends as part of a de-facto Lexow cheering section on Wednesday as she played a few blocks over from Abington High School. She greeted all of them as warmly as she did any of the other traveling Gallaudet supporters, signing to all of them with a smile on her face.

“Cam’s that kind of person who gets along with everybody and that’s how it’s been, it’s just been so easy,” Stevens said. “She’s our family.”

Her first competitive basketball game in four and a half years came in the season opener on Nov. 10 against Goucher and ended with Lexow playing 32 minutes while compiling 20 points, 14 rebounds, five assists, two blocks and two steals. She was named the United East Volt Division’s Defensive Player of the Week on Tuesday. She has 50 steals, by far the most on the team, so far this season.

For most people, all of this would be impossible to pull off.

Most people aren’t Cam Lexow.

“I can’t say I’m surprised, I feel like with my work ethic, I’m always looking to get back out there and challenge myself,” Lexow said. “It’s a different fitness level, going from soccer to basketball, but I worked really hard and trained for this. Once I step over that line, it’s game time, so I kind of just do what I do.”

Stevens said everything is starting to click again on the court for Lexow, but they did have to work off some of the rust early in the season. One area the Bison coach pointed to was in terms of spacing, Lexow still playing with the mentality of moving away from the ball to anticipate a pass coming to her then going as opposed to basketball where it’s more beneficial to move toward the ball.

“She’s picked up so many things, we’ve been so fortunate to have her,” Stevens said. “The team, we all love her and she loves the team.

“January and February is that time where you not only see personnel changes and growth but also in the team as well so just seeing her be more confident in understanding that play on the court, she’s doing so well and I can’t wait to see her blossom.”

On the court and off, everything the Bison do is relayed through signing. Stevens, who is also hearing-abled, calls out plays in sign on the sideline. She gives instruction in timeouts using ASL and the players on the court are constantly signing to each other to call out plays or set a defense. She signs to Lexow and Lexow signs back to her, they keep the same communication with each other as they would any other player on the team.

Naturally, spending most of her life as a vocal communicator meant Lexow would have to learn to do things differently or “turn off my voice” as she put it. While she’s very comfortable signing, Lexow is the first to say she’s not fluent or as skilled as her teammates who have been doing it their entire lives, so that was something they had to work out early on.

“Communication is very important, it’s totally different from an all-hearing basketball team where you can not look at someone but they’re calling ‘screen, screen, screen,’ so I would definitely say something that was - not a culture shock - but I was having to ask people what they said,” Lexow said. “I didn’t fully understand because of how fast they were signing what they’d said and they were very patient with me. That’s something I think I’ve improved on, even in little increments, being receptive to what my teammates are saying to me.”

While she can still hear the officials’ whistle or any of the other myriad noises that occur during a college basketball game, she stressed that doesn’t give her any sort of advantage. As a non-native signer, Lexow said she still botches a sign here and there and her teammates are quick to riff on her about it in good nature, another that she’s the one who has been welcomed into their world.

“They don’t need help,” Lexow said. “I feel like there’s this big misconception that deaf people can’t do things and that’s not really true at all. They can do everything.

“I think the only time I’m helpful to them is when they don’t know what happened when the whistle blew and I can tell them it’s a foul or explain what happened. All of them are great basketball players who know how to get the ball in the hoop.”

On top of changing universities, changing sports and turning her voice off, Lexow’s also in a graduate program for clinical mental health counseling. So, how are classes going so far, Cam?

“4.0 right now,” she said with a wry smile.

Lexow wrapped up by echoing the sentiment the entire experience thus far has encapsulated everything she’d ever dreamed it would. She doesn’t think she’s ever been happier, having found a new family with this team and one that’s given her much, much more than anything she’s given them in terms of points or steals on the basketball court.

For anyone else, it’d be a nigh-impossible undertaking. For Cam Lexow, it’s exactly the place she needs to be while doing exactly the thing she wants to be doing.

“Being immersed in the deaf community is right where I need to be in order to achieve what I want to do,” Lexow said. “I want to be able to give access to deaf, hard-of-hearing, deaf-blind and be able to counsel the deaf community in their language and be educated in deaf culture. The only way I’m going to do that is being in their environment.”