Spirit This Week: Hughes set to represent Canada again at World Deaf Championships
Andrew Hughes will proudly represent Canada again next spring.
The speedy Stouffville Spirit forward has been selected to the national team headed to the World Deaf Hockey Championships in the Buffalo suburb of Amherst, NY from April 19 to 29.
The Ajax resident lights up when recalling his international debut at the 18th Winter Deaflympics in Russia in 2015 .
He was the youngest guy on a Canadian team full of NCAA and U Sports (formerly CIS) players.
“It was phenomenal,” he said “You get like 3,000 fans per game. And it was good hockey, Jr A level or maybe higher. And it was a great group of guys, too.”
Some of his teammates were completely deaf and some could not speak, forcing Hughes to learn sign language for the first time in his life.
Born with meconium in his lungs and unable to breathe, Hughes was airlifted from a hospital in Ajax to SickKids in Toronto. Significant hearing loss resulted and. He has worn hearing aids since the age of 16 months.
"Learning language was harder for him because you have to hear things to say things," his mother, Julie, told durhamregion.com last year. "He's done a lot of speech therapy."
That didn’t prevent Hughes from starring in volleyball, cross-country, track and hockey.
He doesn’t wear his two hearing aids on the ice – sweating and body contact could damage them. He rates his hearing, without the aids, at 50 per cent of normal.
Still, he doesn’t miss many whistles or teammates’ calls for the puck.
“It’s actually kind of quiet on the ice,” he said before Spirit practice at the Stouffville Arena.
The opposition is another thing.
“When they chirp, I can’t hear them,” he says with a laugh. “So I guess that’s a good thing.”
Hughes was looking forward to a second season with the Pickering Panthers when his phone rang last summer. He’d been dealt to the Spirit in a cash deal.
“At first when I got a call from the (Pickering) coach, I was kind of confused, like ‘why are you trading me?’,” he said.
“But when I came (to Stouffville), it was amazing. Everyone welcomed me really well. And now I’m glad I got traded.”
Hughes has nine goal and eight assists in 26 games in Spiritville.
And his new teammates?
“At first, they noticed I had hearing aids,” he said. “So I just told them the truth, that I can’t hear well. They just accepted it.”
Hughes would like to earn an NCAA scholarship but if that doesn’t work out he’ll continue studying carpentry at Durham College.
Hughes’ newest teammate is an Ajax neighbor and old friend, Davis Kuksis. They know each other well, having playing midget AAA together with the Ajax-Pickering Raiders.
FOR OPENERS: It’s hard to imagine a better debut.
Davis Kuksis scored three times, including two shorthanded and one on the power play, as the Stouffville Spirit snapped a five-game winless streak with a 7-4 win over the nationally-ranked Whitby Fury at the Stouffville Arena Saturday night.
Kuksis, obtained from the Pickering Panthers for Kyle Thomas Wednesday, played for Whitby parts of the previous two seasons.
Veteran netminder Aaron Taylor was outstanding for the Spirit who were outshot 50-40 but led 7-2 midway through the third period.
Andrew Hughes had a goal and two assists for the Spirit who scored three times shorthanded.
The Spirit visits Milton Friday and hosts Cobourg Saturday.
This weekly feature is sponsored by Farmer Jack's in Stouffville and Sharon.
