Hurdles aren't just on track
It's finding her disability that takes some legwork.
Unless you notice the hearing aids attached to two ears muted by 90 percent hearing loss or watch the Lakewood High School senior hurdler start a race with one eye cocked at the starter's pistol.
"Then you wouldn't know," Lakewood track coach Michael Evans said. "Unless you really, really studied her, you wouldn't know that she's deaf. She has a real sense of awareness around her.
"I don't know if I could do what she does. I don't know many people, with or without hearing, that could."
So technically, Nash has a disability. Her parents don't know how much hearing she had at birth, but they could tell by age 2 that she wasn't talking.
Her hearing worsened as the years went by, but the awards accumulated and she taught her friends to sign, and somewhere along the way, people stopped thinking of her as the deaf girl.
No one can recall exactly when it happened, when the jokes died down and the admiration set in among her classmates, when people stopped saying cruel things to Nash thinking that she couldn't read their lips.
All Nash can remember is feeling scared when she moved from the Edmonds School District to Lakewood in fifth grade. She was the only deaf student in a "hearing environment," a different student at an age when differences are magnified.
Maybe everything changed when she lifted more weights than half the boys her age. Or maybe it happened when Nash started tearing around the track or waving pompoms for the football team.
But it's different now. They don't talk about disabilities anymore, not with so much ability bursting from a 105-pound body.
"It's to the point where no one thinks twice about it," said Katherine Chamley, a friend and teammate. "It's not, 'Oh, she's deaf.' It's, 'Oh, it's Amber Nash, the famous hurdler.' "
Nash blushed when the words came out, but she means more to folks in Lakewood than she realizes.
"When I watch her, she has a larger impact on people than she or they know," Evans said. "She's a natural. People gravitate to her."
Nash broke school records in the 100-meter hurdles (15.60 seconds) and 300-meter hurdles (45.54), the same event in which she won a Class 2A state championship two seasons ago.
Her disability doesn't affect her running, only her starts. Instead of placing both hands on the track and staring straight ahead, Nash holds one hand on the ground and steers one eye toward the starting gun so she can see the trigger finger and the smoke, and then trigger another smoking of her competitors.
Nash holds the national deaf women's record in the 300 hurdles, which was good enough to land her a spot in the Deaflympics as a U.S. national team member. She will run the 100 and 400 hurdles in January in Melbourne, Australia.
"I didn't think that I would make it because I'm kind of young," Nash said. "When I found out that I made it, I was so happy that I cried, so happy that I couldn't even talk."
She's Amber Nash — Lakewood cheerleader, Amber Nash — solid student, Amber Nash — leader. So many things to so many people.
Nash is the only deaf student in the Lakewood district. She has an interpreter, Laurie Needles, during classes. But so many of her friends have taken an interest in signing that they talk in mixed dialogue, a hybrid of half sign language, half spoken word.
"I'm thinking about a career in sign language because of Amber," said friend Berit Anderson, signing to Nash as she spoke. "Before I knew Amber, I thought I respected people. Through her, I've learned to respect them more.
"She doesn't look at her life like she has a disability. I think it's more of an ability."
"It's amazing," said Amber's mother, Midge Nash. "She's accomplished more than I would have ever pictured somebody without a hearing loss would accomplish. She doesn't let anything slow her down."
Amber Nash finished second in both her hurdle races at state last season, so her eyes are on a return to the state-championship platform. She'll take a year off to train for the Deaflympics and then go to college, possibly on a track scholarship.
Along the way, she disabled a disability, changed the minds of Lakewood's students and found a way to make people forget that she couldn't hear. Teammates find inspiration in that.
"There are still a lot of people learning, a lot of people I can still reach," Nash said. "Everybody realized that I can do just as much as they can. But I don't think they realize how much I've gone through."
Towering Thompson
Fresh off leading Monroe to a fifth-place finish in the Class 4A state tournament last weekend, center Kirsten Thompson got some news this week rivaled in size only by her 6-foot-6 frame.
In the mail came an invitation to the 2004 USA Basketball Youth Development Festival at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. The festival takes place in June, and 48 players are invited to the training ground for the 2004 Junior National Team. The 12 players who make that team will compete in a qualification tournament for the 2004 World Championships for Junior Women in August in Puerto Rico.
"I'm excited," Thompson said, "or something like that."
Fact is, Thompson remains modest. Only the top players in the country receive invitations to this training ground for future Olympians. Thompson is also going to the Adidas Top Ten All-American camp in July as an underclassman for the second time. And she still has a year of basketball remaining on a team that has the talent to return to the Class 4A state tournament.
"Everything is in place," said Thompson, named to the all-tournament first team. "We just have to work our way back there."
Snohomish finishes 6th
The way they organize the Class 4A state tournament consolation brackets, it's tough to tell how good a tournament the Snohomish girls basketball team had last weekend. The Panthers finished sixth, but their losses came to eventual champion Roosevelt of Seattle in the semifinals and Prairie of suburban Vancouver, which finished third.
The Panthers lose only one senior from this year's team. Coach Ken Roberts said he wants his players working on their individual weaknesses this summer, which included some timid play in each of the four games.
"We weren't going into this tournament thinking about how it would help us next year," Roberts said. "But in hindsight, it should help."
Hawks rest
The Mountlake Terrace boys basketball team learned two things in two losses at the Class 4A state tournament last weekend: One, it has the talent to return next year; and two, its players have to get stronger to avoid another two-and-out.
Terrace finished the regular season with one of the stingiest defenses in the state. But in losses to South Kitsap of Port Orchard and Central Kitsap of Silverdale last weekend, the Hawks were out-rebounded significantly in both games.
Plenty of talent will return, coach Nalin Sood said. "And we didn't play our best basketball by any means, and we still had a chance to win two games. With strength in particular, we'll think about what could have been."
Around the county
• WesCo will receive a third state berth for both boys and girls for the Northwest 4A District tournaments next season. This comes with the addition of Meadowdale, which previously played in the 3A district tournament.
Greg Bishop: 206-464-3191 or gbishop@seattletimes.com