Despite being legally deaf, Phifer is one of the best players on the defending district champions and has multiple Division I college football offers.
By Ishmael Johnson
Dallas Morning News
https://www.dallasnews.com/
Talking to Arlington Bowie senior Kaleb Phifer, you wouldn’t presume anything out of the ordinary.
He’s a tall, athletic, soft-spoken high schooler, not unlike other teens. The most notable difference is the near-constant presence of a woman at his side.
Phifer is legally deaf. He has cochlear implants to help him hear, but whenever someone speaks to him, on the Bowie sideline or in the classroom, Arlington ISD translator Tori Talor is there just in case.
“She’s probably one of the best coaches on staff,” Bowie head coach Joseph Sam said of Talor. “There’ve been times where we come off the field and our safeties coach wants to say something, and she’ll tap him on the shoulder and say, ‘No, I got it.’ Next thing you know, she’s getting into him probably harder than the safety coach is.”
When Phifer was born, doctors discovered he couldn’t hear out of his left ear. He wore hearing aids and had routine check-ups to see if his hearing would improve. It didn’t.
His parents were told their son’s hearing would progressively worsen until he lost it altogether. He received his first implant in 2015 and the second in 2017.
But nothing he faced up until that point had presented a big enough barrier to stop him from playing football. He started playing flag around the age of 5, and when he got to middle school, he wanted to play tackle. His father, Thomas, said the initial approach made him nervous, but Kaleb “was determined to play.”
Middle school is also when he connected with Talor, who followed him to Bowie, which opens the season against Prosper Rock Hill on Thursday. She works with Phifer at least six days a week, including practices and games.
Phifer first played football without his processors, the external part of his implant that allowed him to hear, meaning he was completely deaf. He uses them on the field now, but like a lot of modern high school teams, Bowie uses signs to call defensive plays. If Phifer misses one, he can’t always hear a teammate yell the play back. He’s on an island.
“The challenges for me on defense are if I don’t know the play, I struggle a lot,” Phifer said.
That’s where Talor comes in. If Phifer misses the play, he looks to his interpreter, who’s also signaling him. She learned the Bowie playbook to communicate with the 6-2 safety during play and on the sideline.
Sam admits communicating with Phifer and learning how to best approach coaching him was a learning curve for everyone his freshman year, but Talor helped clear the hurdles, allowing Phifer to prosper.
“It’s good just having her as a resource to educate us,” Sam said. “We are definitely glad he’s on our team because he’s a really good athlete, too.”
Phifer blossomed as a junior on varsity last season, recording 70 tackles and an interception to help Bowie go 8-3 and win its second consecutive district title. He’s the team’s returning leading tackler heading into his senior season.
“I said, ‘You are one of a few,’” Talor recalled telling Phifer when they met. “Your job right now, regardless of if you make it to college or pros, you need to set examples for people who are like you to see that they can do this.
“Deaf people can do everything but hear. They can still do whatever they want in life. They might have to take a different approach to it, but they can still do it.”
Football is not the only sport in which Phifer has excelled. He’s a two-time regional qualifier in the 110m hurdles and played freshman and JV basketball.
“A lot of people, they don’t know that he’s hearing impaired,” said his mother, Shermica Smith. “It feels good to just see him out there and be able to accomplish things just as well as a hearing kid. I love it.
“He’s actually opening up doors for other kids just like him.”
Phifer’s received attention from colleges, including offers from UTSA and HBCU programs Grambling State, Prairie View and Howard. Smith jokes that she gets more excited about the offers than her son, who’d rather keep a low profile. But don’t mistake his reluctance to absorb the spotlight as indifference. Phifer still views his success as surreal.
“I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get offers because of how I am,” Phifer said. “I doubted myself, and then until [Talor] helped me have confidence. She talked me through it and I just kept at it.”
Senior Staff Writer | SportsDayHS
Ishmael Johnson is a Senior Staff Writer for the Dallas Morning News covering high school sports with over 10 years of experience covering preps in Texas. Before joining the SportsdayHS Staff, Ishmael previously served as managing editor of Dave Campbell’s Texas Basketball and was an editor and social media strategist at Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine. He is an avid soccer and professional wrestling fan.
Tip/Story Idea? Email [at] ishmael.johnson@dallasnews.com
