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GCU deaf athletic trainer hopes to inspire others

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PHOENIX — As students return back to school, it is also a return to fall season college athletics.

The Grand Canyon University women’s soccer team begins its season Thursday night hosting Mississippi State, where 24-year-old Sean Stoeppel will debut as the team’s athletic trainer.

“Growing up, soccer was always there for me,” Stoeppel told ABC15.

He was born deaf and needed cochlear implants to hear anything. He received his first implant at 13 months, and in the seventh grade got bilateral cochlear implants, meaning both the left and right ear.

“I couldn’t do a hearing aid,” Stoeppel said. “I had no hearing. Hearing aids only amplify what you have. I have nothing.”

He met with doctors and speech pathologists for hours, all on top of his work in school.

Born into a sports family, he couldn’t play football or another sport with a helmet without major risks, so his audiologist suggested soccer.

“It was my home,” Stoeppel said. “It was the place I felt most myself.”

He played in college and was even selected to represent the United States on the deaf national team. In May he graduated as Doctor Stoeppel from Indiana State University with a degree in athletic training.

“Cochlear implants afforded me the opportunity to hear and communicate in a society that functions at a very high level,” Stoeppel said. “To say I’m part of that high level is something I’m never taking for granted.”

He’s in the process of becoming a mentor for the Cochlear Foundation hoping to help others.

“Ignorance is a big thing in society. It’s unfortunate and I’ve been on the rough end of it so many times, but to be able to still overcome and be willing to advocate, educate, I think it’s something we all need to do just a little bit more,” Stoeppel said.

It’s a spirit that’s already earned him respect from what he calls his "new family."

“When we show up we’re an energetic team too so he just feeds off of that,” Junior Defender Aleisha Ganief said. “Yeah we love him!”

Safe to say, the feeling is mutual.

“To say I work with this amazing team that is going to do amazing things this year is so exciting,” Stoeppel said. “Its only been not even 3 months that I’ve been here and I already know this is something I want the rest of my life to look like.”