Blake Smith, Millennium Hall of Fame

Blake Smith never heard the roar of a crowd, never stood up and

took a bow because the applause was silent, and was never burdened by a

heated coach screaming in his ear.

Smith is deaf, but he made himself heard on the football field.

In a classic story of courage and overcoming adversity, Smith never

considered himself handicapped.

He grew up in Costa Mesa, where he played Junior All-American

football, but attended Saddleback High in Santa Ana, which, at the time,

was the only high school in Orange County to offer a hearing impaired

program.

A 6-foot-2, 212-pound defensive end and tight end when he earned

All-Sea View League and All-Orange County honors in the fall of 1982,

Smith became a standout for Coach Jerry Witte’s Roadrunners and helped

them win a league championship.

In one game, playing against his buddies from Estancia (Smith was

raised in the Mesa Verde area), the two-way starter was a double dose of

trouble in Saddleback’s 43-21 victory over the Eagles, scooping up two

fumbles and returning them 29 and 14 yards for touchdowns. He also set up

a Saddleback touchdown with a 54-yard pass reception.

Defensively in the game against his former grade-school teammates,

Smith provided four unassisted tackles, one quarterback sack and one

caused fumble, while meriting Daily Pilot Player of the Week accolades.

Smith, who returned both fumbles for touchdowns in a span of less than

three minutes, ended the title season with 119 tackles (second on the

squad) and a team-leading nine sacks.

Smith, who spent his prep football career with an interpreter at games

and practices, was a three-year starter for Saddleback and earned the

coaches’ award his senior year for being the team’s most inspirational

player.

A four-sport star at McFadden Junior High, Smith used athletics to

bridge the gap between a handicapped and normal world.

“It’s good for the body and it’s a way to be accepted into the hearing

world,” Smith said, defining sports as a 14-year-old through an

interpreter in a Daily Pilot article June 19, 1979.

At that age, Smith, in addition to being a fine athlete, had a passion

for fishing, snow skiing, water skiing and golf, shooting in the low 90s.

“Somehow,” the aforementioned article said, “he also finds time to raise

birds and grow vegetables in his own backyard garden.”

But his main love was for team sports and Smith, with keen eyesight

and quick reflexes, turned his special sixth sense into somewhat of a

beating for opposing ballcarriers in the Sea View League’s ’82 campaign.

Nobody was certainly treating o7 himf7 like a handicapped.

“That’s what killed us,” Estancia football coach Ed Blanton said after

Smith returned two fumbles for touchdowns in Saddleback’s victory over

the Eagles in Week 9 before 3,500 fans at Newport Harbor High.

From the Saddleback sidelines, interpreter Dottie Hanson would give

Smith signals and he would take it from there. Mistakes can be made

within such a handicap, but Smith never misread Hanson’s signals.

“(Smith) is certainly one of our favorites,” Witte said in November

1982. “The biggest thing is everything working well, because of the kids’

attitude toward him. They all have their ways of communicating with him

-- some of them have sign language, the working man’s sign language.”

Smith went on to play college football at Cal State Northridge, but

suffered a severe knee injury playing his first varsity game as a

freshman, ending his career on the 10th play of the season.

Attempting to sack a quarterback, Smith was hit in the knee by a

teammate and tore ligaments on both sides of it.

At Saddleback, Smith became the second deaf player to participate on

the varsity football team, but the first to earn a starting job. One

sportswriter called Smith “the greatest deaf athlete to come out of

Orange County.”

Greatly influenced growing up in baseball by the late Paul Troxel

(former Estancia and Costa Mesa coach), Smith played left field for

Saddleback and made second-team all-league his senior year. His only

problem was hearing the umpire holler balls and strikes.

“I have to turn around to see what the umpire has called,” Smith once

told the Los Angeles Times. “But I usually know when the call is going to

be a ball.”

Today, Smith, a member of the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame,

celebrating the millennium, enjoys slo-pitch softball and fishing.

Smith, 35, is currently a player-manager for a state and national

championship deaf slo-pitch team and serves as president of the

California Deaf Fishing Club. He works as a finish carpenter and lives in

Brea with his wife, Stephanie, and two children.