John I. Leonard's Lovinske Louis is deaf but his basketball game speaks loud and clear

GREENACRES — Get the basketball and pass left. Be patient, waiting for a pass. Once it comes, drive for a layup and score.

Each week, when John I. Leonard High School's Lovinske Louis gets the long-awaited nod to come off the bench for the Lancers' boys basketball team, he makes the most of it.

The youngest member of a senior-stacked roster, the bright-eyed freshman watched the ball slip into the basket, cutting his eyes to the sideline as he turned the corner. There, his eyes met Leonard head coach Eddie Tolliver. Alongside Tolliver stood program assistant Ashley DeBeck.

Tolliver gave the signal that Louis was still in for the next play, and DeBeck's hands began a beautiful dance.

Louis is deaf. DeBeck is his interpreter. It works as simply as that, and he's not shy about it.

When asked whether he had any hesitations about joining a varsity roster, Louis was quick to shake his head no. DeBeck was just as quick to say out loud what was on Louis' mind: "Because I'm brave. And I love basketball."

From little Louis to Lancer

But his friend asking him to join the Palm Springs Middle School basketball team was a different story. Louis recalled being "a little bit nervous about that," sharing that the experience helped him develop confidence.

"I wish that people knew that it doesn't matter that you're deaf. It doesn't impact me as a basketball player. It's just part of who I am."

He got on the team in the same way all of his teammates did.

"I joined the summer workout program and I worked really hard. I showed up every day and my coaches saw my skills and they thought that I was good enough to get on varsity," Louis said.

He has the same struggles as most freshmen.

"Sometimes it's hard because I know that some of the seniors are better than me and they have more experience, so I'm not always involved as much as I want to be in the games," Louis said. "But I've had to accept that and that's probably the hardest thing I've had to overcome."

Louis just has the bonus of an interpreter, which is the norm at John I. Leonard High.

The school's campus exposes its entire student body to what could be characterized as a signing ecosystem. In addition to Louis, Leonard has over 35 deaf or hard-of-hearing students enrolled. DeBeck explained that Leonard, in Greenacres, was designated by the Palm Beach County School District as the Central Area deaf cluster program.

Students living between 45th Street and Delray Beach are encouraged to attend Leonard. Students have as much access as they desire to nine interpreters, including DeBeck. Currently, 17 Leonard students take advantage of that.

Louis, who was born in Haiti, is learning English in American Sign Language. DeBeck is by his side from the time the bell rings signaling class has begun to pregame — and postgame — bus rides.

Tolliver chimed in, "Miss Ashley don't play about Lovinske."

"I think Lovinske is a very sweet kid and he has a good personality, and you can see he's a motivated player, so it makes you want to go all in for their interpreting as well and makes you not mind being here 40-plus hours a week, sometimes extra, when you have you own children at home," DeBeck said with a grin, estimating that the pair spend 20 to 25 hours per week in practices and games alone. And that's for a "light week."

"When you spend so much time with a student, you develop a different relationship with those kids than some of the ones you interpret for in class," she said.

Beginnings in Haiti

Louis learned his first language, Creole, in Haiti, growing up in the nation rocked to shambles by the 2010 magnitude 7.0 earthquake that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions homeless.

"I wasn't born deaf," Louis explained. "I had some problems with my ears when I was young, very young."

A lack of health care infrastructure in Haiti was costly for Louis.

As Louis learned he would have to adjust to a world with no sound, his family learned that accessibility services in Haiti were virtually nonexistent.

"In Haiti, there's not really a lot of technology or anything that supports the deaf," Louis said. "There's no hearing aids. There's no schools, so my family moved me here to America so I could have a better education and I could have technology like hearing aids and things like that to assist me in my life."

When he was 8, Louis' family moved over 700 miles to start a new life in Florida. That same year, his new friends helped make his introduction to basketball.

Since the rest of his family can hear, no one else was familiar with ASL. With the bit of sound he can make out when using his hearing aids, Louis explained he'll use his voice to speak away from school.

"I just have to speak Creole. I only know a little bit of it, so I have to use a mixture of that and English when I'm at home," Louis said.

Social media trending 'Standing on business' in sign language

But there are folks around Louis who are learning to speak his latest language.

"Coach Tolliver and also coach [Matthew] Schorr, they always make sure to pick me up, drop me off, and make sure that I get to practice and get home. Coach Schorr started taking sign language classes during the summer so that he could learn sign language and communicate with me," Louis said.

In 21 years as an interpreter, 18 at Leonard, DeBeck said she's interpreted every sport. But she's never seen a team approach inclusivity the way the basketball team surrounding Louis has.

"The boys' basketball team is the most bought-in for learning signing language of all the teams," said DeBeck, a graduate of Santaluces and the University of South Florida. "I'll be out by the bus waiting for his ride and they'll come up and start asking us questions for sign. They went on TikTok and learned signs. They're very motivated to learn to be able to communicate with Lovinske."

Louis described his favorite moment of the year.

He stood his index and middle fingers atop his flat hand. Next, his flat hand became a fist, and his dominant hand opened up, palm facing out and thumb tucked, to glide left and right.

"All of my teammates showed up to practice one day and they all had learned how to sign 'Standing on business,' so that was pretty cool," Louis said, happy to have the trendy social media saying in his ASL arsenal.

"Sometimes, the signs they learn on TikTok are not the right signs," Louis said. His eyes widened as he chuckled about his teammates. "And they want to learn all the bad words."

The Lancers have the same desire to learn even when the game is on the line.

Louis noted that some Lancers, like senior and fellow first-year player Reggie Presendieu, will give a helpful tap, pull on the jersey or guiding nudge once the clock is running. Still, the majority of the squad is always working to learn more signs to be better teammates.

"If I'm standing there interpreting and they want to tell Lovinske something, they'll just start hollering, 'Miss Ashley, come over here, tell Lovinske this,' or if I'm signing man-to-man, then one of them will ask what the sign is for it and you'll see them all start signing to each other," DeBeck said.

The Lancers' unique way of bonding has seen the team continue the success of last year's 18-8 turnaround season through the transition from now-Gardens coach James Lake to Tolliver, who went from assistant to head in the offseason.

Tolliver will be the first to tell you that being a first-year head coach is daunting. Coaching a deaf student-athlete? Not in the slightest.

"We try to interpret plays where it's not hard. If it's a play that's designed to have two hands, we do it where we ask him what will be better," Tolliver said.

Since first catching a glimpse of Louis playing JV basketball last year, Tolliver was determined to make sure that the then-eighth grader would be on his first team.

"I knew I wanted him the minute I saw him," Tolliver said.

"He has the basketball IQ already — honestly, I think it's better than a lot of other players," he continued. "He's going to contest every shot. You're not going to shoot a 3-pointer without him jumping at it and 90% of the time, he's going to block it. He's great. This summer is going to be mainly focused on just building his confidence on offense and getting his shot better."

But Tolliver didn't want Louis just for his incomparable intuition or growing 6-foot-2 frame, although those factors certainly helped.

Tolliver wanted Louis because he's the kind of kid who blushes bashfully at the mention of his teammates signing a dirty word. The kind of kid who looks forward instead of down out of fear of what he may see when he picks up his head.

"One time, I remember before the game at Spanish River, a boy in the audience knew sign language and he signed to me 'How are you?' and I was like, 'Oh, I'm good,' and I really just felt kind of cool and inspired that they took the time to say hi to me like that and recognize that I knew sign language," Louis said.

"It makes me happy that younger kids can see me."

The kind of kid who chooses to be better in a society that could've made him bitter.

Goals of Gallaudet

Louis already has big plans for his future. Beyond continuing to be a role model, he knows where he hopes to continue his basketball career.

His dream destination is Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.

The Division III institution is the only college in the country to field deaf-led athletic teams, the majority, including basketball, competing in the United East Conference.

Setting up the signing day table to put pen to paper on a national letter of intent is a good way off for Louis. However, Gallaudet can't keep him off campus for that long.

A couple of weeks ago, Louis opened his email to find a message from Gallaudet, responding to his interest in attending a camp for the basketball program in the coming months.

Face aglow in the light of the computer and DeBeck smiling over his shoulder, the youngster signed and shouted in exclamation.

"Oooooh-weeeee!"

Emilee Smarr is a sports reporter for The Palm Beach Post. She can be reached via email at esmarr@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Deaf high school basketball player turning heads in Palm Beach County