Deaf Rodeo Queen
Travels Without Interpreter

Karina Tees, Miss Rodeo Canada 1999, travels without an interpreter She uses speech and lipreading to understand conversations, and asks people to repeat when she doesn't understand what they say.

The doctors discovered Tees was deaf when she was three years old. She began to speak at four years old, and learned sign language when she was 13 years old.

Tees is used to animals because she was raised on a farm. There were 15,000 people in the audience when she mounted her quarter horse, Clementine, and won the Miss Rodeo contest.

Tees graduated from high school at 17 years old, the youngest student in her class and the only deaf student. In school, she used a sign language interpreter to understand her teachers.

Last spring, Tees visited students at the Provincial School for the Deaf, in British Columbia, Canada.

—Canadian Deaf News

Alaskan High Kick Champion Lady Chris Wins

Lady Chris, a 17-year-old student at Alaska School for the Deaf and Hard of Heating, won the championship at the Alaskan High Kick in the Native Youth Olympics in Anchorage, Alaska.

Lady Chris doing her champion high kick.

"I was surprised and happy to win," said Lady Chris.

The Alaskan High Kick is a feat where athletes position themselves on the ground, aim one of their legs straight up, and kick a ball as high into the air as possible. Lady Chris kicked the ball 70 inches, the highest of any of the girls.

The Alaskan high kick originated with the Native Eskimo people. Lady Chris is Yup'ik, part of a group of Eskimo people. She grew up in a village of 400 residents on the Kuskokwim Bay. Her family hunted and fished all year long. They caught seal, duck, beaver, mink, and bear. They also caught lots of seafood, including salmon, clams, halibut, and rainbow trout. Lady Chris has grown up hard of hearing. She knows Yup'ik, English, and American Sign Language

"I enjoy other sports, too," said Lady Chris, "Including soccer, basketball, and football that I play just for fun."

This is her first year at Alaska School for the Deaf, and she is not sure about going to college. There are no stores in her village, and the stores in Anchorage have fascinated her. She hopes some day to work in one, she said.

Lady Chris was interviewed on TTY with the assistance of Elizabeth Merideth, her houseparent.