Wadsworth's Kyle Figuray excels in football and baseball despite being deaf in right ear

Kyle Figuray is too busy writing the next chapter of his life to worry about his “disability.”

The word is in quotation marks because if you know the Wadsworth senior, you know nothing is stopping the football and baseball star from his dreams.

Figuray was born without an ear canal (aural atresia) and had an underdeveloped ear (microtia).

In layman’s terms, he was deaf on the right side.

If you think that hindered him, you haven’t talked to the 6-foot-1, 205-pound two-sport star.

“That’s his personality and his upbringing,” Grizzlies football coach Justin Todd said. “You control the things that you can, and that's something that's outside of Kyle's control. You have a situation, you learn, and you grow from it. You make the best of it because there’s another play, there's another breath, there's all that other stuff.

“I think that's why it doesn't affect him because he's created a situation in his life where he doesn't allow it to affect anything that he does. That's just who Kyle is.”

Figuray is a little bit more.

In 2022, the running back was an all-district honorable mention selection after he rushed for 1,020 yards and 21 touchdowns. He’s a captain this season.

He’s also the reigning Suburban League National Conference Player of the Year in baseball after a season in which he batted .363 with 25 RBIs as a shortstop and catcher.

Figuray also carries a 3.2 GPA.

“Baseball seems to always have those kids that think they're a little better than anybody else, and that hasn’t been him since Day 1,” Wadsworth baseball coach Greg Pickard said. “I mean, he just comes in and works hard and holds himself very accountable. He demands a lot of himself and leads in the right ways. His impact on our program on the field is just as much off the field. He's a first-class kid.”

How things started for Kyle Figuray

His parents, Mark and Barbara, wanted to give him as much of a normal life as they could.

The Figurays consulted Akron Children’s Hospital about possibly fixing the ear and giving Kyle the ability to hear.

With help from the University of Akron researchers it worked and a new ear was constructed from cartilage from his rib cage.

Akron Children's Hospital helps out Surgery when Kyle Figuray was young helped Wadsworth standout succeed in life, athletics

His cochlea, the portion of the ear that changes sound into nerve messages to send to the brain, was intact. But without an ear canal most of the sound waves couldn’t reach the inner ear.

Because of it, a bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) was attached to his skull to amplify sound waves directly to the cochlea.

“It's not something that you sat and dwelled on or worried about,” Mark Figuray said. “He was an infant and it's like, ‘Well, could there be other problems?’ They wanted to make sure the hearing in the good ear let him develop normal speech and language, so I guess we were fortunate as we went along. We didn't really have any issues with that.”

Figuray’s school life began just like any other kindergartner.

His speech was great. His communication with others was flawless and his hearing was good.

“It gives me goosebumps to think about how he was born, how he has dealt with it and where he has gotten in his life so far,” Barbara Figuray said. “Mark and I never really allowed it to affect him as a negative. Obviously, we wanted him to look normal when he was first born. So, yes, we wanted to get that fixed that way he would not be self-conscious.

"I think Mark and I just kind of instilled that he was just like everybody else. And because Kyle never had hearing from Day 1, he grew up knowing no different. And then when he got the BAHA, he kind of probably felt like it was doing just fine.”

Complications and solutions for Kyle Figuray

The best news is the reformed ear has stayed true to this day, but as Figuray grew so did the skin around the screw of the BAHA. That caused some very bad infections.

Replacement could have led to added expenses, but Kyle decided at the age of 12 that he didn’t like the BAHA anyway and had it removed.

That meant no sound on the right side all over again.

“I just haven't let it get to me,” he said. “It's something I've gotten used to and something that I've accepted. It's normal to me, so I've never lived it any other way. I couldn't tell you how much different it would be.

"For a lot of people, it could have been something that stopped them from doing what they love to do. For me, I didn’t let it affect me. I did what I did. I knew there'd be people out there that judged me, but to me those people didn't matter, and I just kept on doing my thing.”

The present and future of Kyle Figuray

Some people at Wadsworth might be finding out just now that Figuray can’t hear out of his right ear.

Some football coaches learned about it Wednesday evening during interviews for this story.

Figuray knows where to sit so he can hear his coaches. Football and baseball are both signal based at Wadsworth, so that doesn’t impact him.

The only person that can affect Figuray is himself and that’s not going to happen.

“I played basketball with him for two years and I didn't know,” Wadsworth quarterback Will Stack said. “He doesn't let it bother him in any aspect of life. He can literally do anything he wants. He is not defined by that event. He knows that it’s out of his control. He does not let it get in the way at all.”

Figuray’s athletic future will be in baseball.

Where that is remains to be seen, but don’t expect even a hiccup at the next level.

“I don't ever use him as a model of someone overcoming a ‘disability,’” Todd said. “He is the model that you want everybody to be.”

Contact Brad Bournival at bbournival@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @bbournival

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Wadsworth football, baseball star overcomes deafness, succeeds in life